forcing native access with websphere and toolbox

["Alex Garrison" <agarrison@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tip of the day: IBM Java Toolbox Record Level I/O from Servlets

 

One of the benefits of doing record level i/o on an as/400 instead of jdbc is that the toolbox is smart enough to use direct database access if you are on the as/400 instead of going through tcp/ip sockets.  This is a big potential speed improvement.  However, if you are doing toolbox record level i/o from within servlets in websphere, you may not be seeing this benefit.  The toolbox may still be going through the tcp/ip stack.

 

Long answer

Before I explain how to fix the problem, you can check to see for yourself by turning on the toolbox traces in your servlet.  Put something like this in your servlet prior to your connectService(AS400.RECORDACCESS) statement:

   try
    {Trace.setFileName("ToolbxTr.log");}
   catch(Exception e){}
   Trace.setTraceWarningOn(true);
   Trace.setTraceInformationOn(true);
   Trace.setTraceErrorOn(true);
   Trace.setTraceDiagnosticOn(true);
   Trace.setTraceDatastreamOn(true) ;
   Trace.setTraceConversionOn(true);
   Trace.setTraceOn(true);
This should create a file called ToolbxTr.log.  If you dont specify a path name you will most likely get the log in the root of your IFS.  You may want to specify the file name as something like "/home/ToolbxTr.log".

 

Run your servlet and then look in the trace file.  You definitely have the problem if you have a line like this in the log file:

 

Wed Nov 10 08:27:36 GMT+00:00 1999 Requirements not met to use native optimizations: UserID does not match local userid

 

This line means that the toolbox will go through tcp/ip sockets for your database i/o even though the servlet is really on the as/400.  The problem is that the toolbox checks to see if the userprf you used in making the toolbox connection is the same as the owner of the job running the servlet.  For websphere this means that you must connect to the as/400 using the QTMHHTTP user profile like so (of course substituting the correct system name and password):

 

AS400 host = new AS400("MYSYSNAME","QTMHHTTP","PASSWORD");
try{host.connectService(AS400.RECORDACCESS);}

catch(Exception e){}

 

Now if you run the same traces on your servlet you should see two lines like this in the log file:

Wed Nov 10 13:32:55 GMT+00:00 1999 Using native optimizations

Wed Nov 10 13:32:55 GMT+00:00 1999 No service connection necessary for native service: as-ddm

short answer

Make sure your servlet connects to the as/400 with the QTMHHTTP user profile.

 

Alex Garrison
agarrison@logtech.com
(423)636-7213