cwbx info on connection pooling

Well, I talked on the phone with IBM's .net Support. And the cwbx definitely does not do any kind of pooling. It's a batch/queue setup. So multiple calls into the dll will stack up one after the other until they are all done.

To get around this I created a simple Object Pool, that would instanciate the object's connection to the 400, and then when I need the object, get it from the pool, use it and return it. Pretty slick!

As for the connecitons on the 400, they just sit in a status of TIMW until they are used. I do have a limit on the number of connections in the pool, so if I get too many in there, I close the oldest one down.

cwbx help files

Well, I wrote an application that I was getting the objectdisposed exception in, and that was using IBMs .net provider to talk to the as400, call a stored proc which called a program.

Unfortunately, that wasn't fast enough for me, so I started searching around for help on calling programs directly. I found a dll, that you can reference in your project, which will give you access to calling 400 programs directly. This opens up a whole new world because you can start passing complex types back and forth (suposedly, I haven't tried this myself). The downside, is that there is only one real other blog that actually has info on it.
http://www.netsplore.com/PublicPortal/blog.aspx?EntryID=13

And the program works great. However, I needed to know what some of the values mean, because even though this method is faster than the .net provider, i'm still slower than running websphere for the same calls.

It took some reasearch, but for all you out there, who need to know, you can find the cwbx.dll help files in the following directory on your windows system:

C:\Program Files\IBM\Client Access\Mri2924\cwbx.hlp

that last directory having to do something with the version of your client access.....

This basically a help file on what all the values, types, methods, objects, etc mean for that dll.

objectdisposedexception Fixed!

I found the problem, and posted the solution on a comment field in one of the previous posts. But here it is. Our server was running the latest fixes, however, my client access was not updated to the latest service pack. Our Operations manager, gave me this link to IBMs site to install the service pack on my local windows machine, and it works.

ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/as400/products/clientaccess/win32/

Then select v5r4m0 (or what ever version you are running), servicepack, and si29771.

Download si29771.exe and run it on your system. Poof! Now you no longer get the objectdisposedexception, and no more errors with ThreadPool.RegisterWaitForSingleObject

Hope this helps!

web.config appsettings and updates

Well, I finally figured it out. If you're like me, you have some settings in your website that you want to be able to update, but you don't want to bounce the app domain, yet, your values need to be displayed as changes.

I figured out how to do it. First, give the section of your web.config a config source. This will point your web.config to a separate file that you can use to store your settings. Since, it's this other file that is updating, your app domain shouldn't bounce every time you change a setting



Once you've added that line,

then add either in a separate class, partial, or wherever the following:

private void SaveSetting(string SettingName, string SettingValue)
{
//connect to the webconfiguration file
Configuration config = WebConfigurationManager.OpenWebConfiguration("~");

//get the setting that you want to update
KeyValueConfigurationElement setting = config.AppSettings.Settings[SettingName];

//assign the new value to the setting
setting.Value = SettingValue;

//save the configuration changes
config.Save(ConfigurationSaveMode.Minimal, false);

// Force a reload of the changed section.
ConfigurationManager.RefreshSection("appSettings");

}



This will get the key that you are looking for, update it. You can actually see when this happens, if in Visual Studio you have the file open. It will prompt you that a change has been made to the file, and ask if you wish to reload it.

Edit: Note, that even when you force the RefreshSection, from what I understand, that'll only refresh the web.config section to reload. Appearently, it won't always refresh external files. So your changes may not show up right away. ARG.

If anyone has a solution to this, I'd appreciate it.

.net framework debugging

It's finally out. On ScottGu's blog, he posted information on how to read the .net framework source code!

.NET Framework Library Source Code now available

You do still have to enable it, but at least it's available.

Free Microsoft books.

I just found 3 free microsoft books that you can download as a PDF:

Microsoft Press

Once signed in, you can download Introducing LINQ, Introducing ASP.NET AJAX, and Introducing Silverlight 1.0

You can preview a couple of chapters, or download the whole book in PDF format.

Enjoy!

SSIS, AS400 and the System.Byte[]

So, I have an SSIS package that I'm wanting to create. When I use the ODBC connection (similar in the DTS), I can pull everything over fine. I have 2 fields, one is a Char(3) the other a Char(13) on the 400. I've made the exact table in my sql server db.

The problem is that if I use the ole for .net instead of odbc, I get the following Error when I switch the provider in the SSIS package:




I'm using the IBMDA400 OLEdb\IBM DB2 UDB for iSeries when I get the error

I'm not having this problem with any other of my SSIS packages... wierd.