Importing and exporting data from a database to another using SyBase is taking a long time
Without getting too involved in specific details on the language required to do this in Sybase SQL Anywhere 8, which is now more than 15 years old, I'd recommend something like the following:


create a table on the laptop database that contains a column which uniquely identifies rows that have already been exported to the main database.
the export function would do something like the following:

SELECT * 
FROM tableName 
WHERE tableName.KeyColumn NOT IN (
    SELECT KeyColumn 
    FROM PreviouslyExportedTable
    ) 
OUTPUT TO 'C:\path' FORMAT ASCII DELIMITED BY ';';

Exporter then inserts rows into the PreviouslyExportedTable that don't already exist.  Next time the exporter runs, it will only export new rows that weren't already exported.  The insert code might look like:

INSERT INTO PreviouslyExportedTable
SELECT KeyColumn
FROM TableName
WHERE KeyColumn NOT IN (
    SELECT KeyColumn 
    FROM PreviouslyExportedTable
    );



This should drastically reduce the number of rows that need to be exported and imported each time.  It is uncertain to me if SQL Anywhere 8 supports using WHERE NOT EXISTS clauses instead of WHERE NOT IN; the NOT EXISTS variant might be faster, if it works.