Transoft Developers

DBPronto v3.00 release

DBPronto version 3.0 has now been released.

DBPronto server Table Caching

DBPronto can be made to use table caches for improving the performance of table read operations, especially when performing random read operations. The DBPronto server will automatically update a table cache when performing updating operations such as OPEN OUTPUT, WRITE, REWRITE and DELETE.

Please refer to the exciting, newly overhauled DBPronto documentation for more information.

In the near future we plan to enhance this functionality so that it can be used with the client block reading mechanism so as to reduce the DBPronto client/server communication and provide further performance benefit.

Identifying owners of locks from the DBPronto Administrator

The DBPronto Administrator has been enhanced to display the PID and user name of users connected to the DBPronto server. With the session ID and the list of record locks, this information may be used to identify the users who have particular records locked.

Opening over 250 files

The DBPronto client libraries have been enhanced so that the maximum number of file’s that can be opened at one time by a process is now configurable. Previously this value was limited to 250.

New API calls to fetch multiple rows using an SQL query

The problem with the DBPronto SQLCMD API routine is that when used with SQL queries, it may only be used with those that return a single row. To overcome this restriction we have introduced the SQLQUERY, SQLQUERY_FETCH and SQLQUERY_CLOSE API routines.

This functionality may prove useful in the few cases where existing program logic doesn’t work well with DBPronto and standard file I/O, and can better be expressed with alternative SQL coding. An example of this are batch jobs where large volumes of data are read but performance is critical.

In the near future we plan to enhance this functionality so that it can be used with the client block reading mechanism .

Table Maintenance routines

We have enhanced the DBPronto client libraries with new routines to enable application programs to instruct the DBPronto server to globally close and reopen tables, and perform metadata refresh operations.

The close and reopen routines may be used to prevent applications from accessing tables whilst for any reason they have to be taken off-line. The reopen routine may also be used to create tables that do not already exist.

Using SET_WHERE with the DBPPP

Enhanced the DBPronto pre-processor so that it will recognise a new DBP-SET-WHERE statement that will be converted to a call to the DBPPP_SET_WHERE routine. This enhancement was especially useful for RM COBOL application that wish to use the SET_WHERE functionality which may be used to restrict rows selected by queries.

The metadata creator to sort alternate keys by byte order instead of SELECT order.

We have enhanced the metadata creator to define alternate keys by byte order instead of SELECT statement order. This behaviour is now the default when generating metadata for use with ACU but can also be enabled and disabled using specific command option lines options.

DBPronto v3.00

DBPronto v3.00 is currently in QA and will be released later this month.

One of the big enhancements is the implementation of configurable table caching.

To give you an indication of the benefits, the table below shows the time taken by a program using U/FOS data access to read 8000 records from a  U/FOS database compared with the same program reading from a SQL Server database via DBPronto with a variety of configuration options:

This demonstrates the fact that DBPronto performance can be improved using a range of configuration options which are designed to be applicable in different situations depending on the data structures used and the type of processing.

Another option is to use DBSQLCMD and DBFETCH commands to access the data using specific SQL. This can be very helpful in the very few cases where existing program logic doesn’t map well onto RDBMS data access and the problem is difficult to solve using DBPronto configuration alone.

DBPronto Documentation

We have completely overhauled the DBPronto documentation.

It is now much easier to navigate and includes a new, easy-to-use ‘Getting Started’ section.

Please download DBPronto.chm from ftp://ftp2.transoft.com/pub/DBPextras/