Overview of PRO/5 Under Novell NetWare

Sections

This section consists of the following topics:

• SPOOLING

• Technical Notes for Novell NetWare

• Sample Configuration for Novell NetWare

Overview

The Novell NetWare version of PRO/5 takes advantage of the advisory locking, print spooling, and transaction tracking capabilities provided by the Novell network. It is intended for use with Novell NetWare 3.12 and 4.1.

The PRO/5 Under MS-DOS and MS-DOS Networks and Visual PRO/5 Under the Windows Operating System documentation apply to the Novell NetWare versions of PRO/5 and provide information to successfully and efficiently run PRO/5 in the Novell NetWare environment.

Advisory Locking

The record locking functions provided by MS-DOS permit only one user-access to a record at a time, whether reading or writing. Novell NetWare provides different levels of locks so PRO/5 can allow many users to read a record simultaneously while still limiting updates to one at a time. A record can even be read that is currently extracted by the same user on a different channel.

If the NOVELL_LOCKS keyword is included in config.bbx, the Novell version of PRO/5 will use the Novell lock functions. Otherwise, the MS-DOS locks are used. To use advisory locking, the Novell drivers must be active and the NOVELL_LOCKS flag must be present in your config.bbx file, and bits $40$ and/or $20$ must be set in OPTS byte 3. Refer to the SETOPTS verb and the use of each of the two advisory locking bits.

Transaction Tracking

The Novell NetWare operating system provides a transaction tracking function to guarantee that either all or none of the pieces of a single transaction will be written to the disk. If the server should go down part way through a transaction, all updates are backed out until the database is restored to its state prior to the start of the transaction.

The Novell version of PRO/5 can take advantage of this service to ensure that all of the information pertaining to a given record, including both its content and its index entry, are updated on the disk in lock step. In order to provide this protection for a PRO/5 file, the user must include the NOVELL_TTS keyword in the config.bbx file and mark the file as transactional using the Novell FLAG command.

A file flagged as transactional can not be renamed or deleted.

Note that this function is not the same feature as the PRO/5 Transaction Tracking system. The two systems are completely independent of each other. We recommend that only one system be used at a time, though the only penalty for using both at the same time is a drop in performance.

Dot File Names

Novell NetWare filesystems do not have the traditional "." and ".." entries in each directory. If your application depends on these being available, you can arrange for your NetWare DOS requester or driver to emulate them. Consult your NetWare documentation for the correct way to do this.

NetWare Directory Services (NDS)

PRO/5 relies on a global database at the NetWare server to locate print queues and other information. With the release of NetWare 4.x, Novell uses the distributed NetWare Directory Services (NDS) database in lieu of the local Bindery Database.

The Visual PRO/5 NetWare Client includes built-in support for both NDS and the Bindery and will use NDS if it is available. The 386 MS-DOS Novell NetWare version does not include NDS support, and thus requires bindery emulation (enabled by default) on NetWare 4.x installations.

If you are using the Visual PRO/5 Client under NetWare 4.x, and no other applications require bindery emulation, you may disable bindery emulation by issuing

SET BINDERY CONTEXT =

at the NetWare 4.1 console in the server's AUTOEXEC.NCF file. (The equal sign, "=", is the last character on the line.)