Re: Connecto to AS/400 with java

Hi Jon,

In the past I would have agreed with you without question, because I
have seen documentation (at some point in the past) that said the Toolbox
ends up using the native driver when running on an AS/400.

However, last year one of my clients misguidedly decided to use IBM for
a project ( "misguided" not in the sense that IBM was bad, but that they did
not use conceptGO ;-) ) I just happened to mention JTOpen using the native
driver when AS/400 resident, and the response was "don't think so." OTOH,
they used JTOpen JDBC classes with WebSphere even though WAS was ( sounds
like Clinton: "is is" ) AS/400 resident.

Since then I've wondered if anything changed. When I saw your note, I
went looking; you can see what the Toolbox for Java FAQ says about Native
Optimizations:

http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/iseries/toolbox/faq.html#nativeOp

It specifically mentions only
====================================
Signon -- if no userid or password is specified in the AS400 object, the
current job's userid and password are used.

Record-level database access, data queues, program call, command call, and
user space -- if security requirements are met, functions are performed by
directly calling i5/OS APIs instead of making a socket calls to host servers
to carry out a request.
====================================

So I have to at least wonder if standard JDBC calls are natively
optimized in the resident case. I would appreciate it if anyone else can
point to documentation and/or code to support that the driver *does* switch
to native when AS/400 resident.

In the end it doesn't really matter *to me or my clients*, other than
optimizing prestart jobs in differing subsystems, because I have always
checked for AS/400 residency and loaded drivers accordingly. But, if the
toolbox does not use native access when resident, there are likely many
apps that could pick up some performance by specifying the native driver.

As to the original questioner, clearly things to some extent depend on
the outcome of the discussion above. I'm a little surprised that someone
who provides services to others doesn't RTM, but here's an example that
works in either case:

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/iseries/v5r4/topic/rzaha/getconnections.htm

As long as I'm being mean, I would also say that being bound to one OS
and one IDE (as in "my developer envoirenment (sic) its windows. I use the
netbeans ide to write my apps") is as limiting as not using Java. I
recently saw a request for a JBuilder developer, but that's a different
story...


Joe Sam

Joe Sam Shirah - http://www.conceptgo.com
conceptGO - Consulting/Development/Outsourcing
Java Filter Forum: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/
Just the JDBC FAQs: http://www.jguru.com/faq/JDBC
Going International? http://www.jguru.com/faq/I18N
Que Java400? http://www.jguru.com/faq/Java400

----- Original Message ----- From: "Jon Paris" <Jon.Paris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <java400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2007 2:12 PM
Subject: Re: Connecto to AS/400 with java

On 18-Nov-07, at 1:00 PM, java400-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

We have to use The ToolBox for java ? or we
have other/better options (Native Drivers)?

I believe the answer is that you (effectively) do both. When you use
the Toolbox APIs on the same system as the target objects it "short
circuits" and uses direct microcode level support thereby making the
APIs much more efficient.

Jon Paris

www.Partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com