1. Rajesh Nair & Chris Golledge Kansas City, MO January 30, 2004 IDS and.NET

2. Kansas City Informix User's Group Agenda Overview of.NET.NET Framework Architecture ADO.NET Architecture Features of the IDS.NET Provider Roadmap of IDS.NET Support

3. Kansas City Informix User's Group Overview of.NET.NET is a new framework for developing enterprise applications –Actively in use on Microsoft Windows platforms –No single language required for development.NET is a response to industry trends: –Distributed Computing –Componentization –Enterprise Services –Web paradigm shifts –Maturity

4. Kansas City Informix User's Group Overview of.NET Requires a new API (provider) for access to data sources –API is exposed as a set of.NET interfaces Object-Oriented Architecture “Namespaces” used to organize classes into related groups Managed vs. Unmanaged code

5. Kansas City Informix User's Group.NET Framework Architecture Web ServicesASP.NETWin Forms ADO.NET / XML Classes Framework Base Classes CLR V S. N E T

6. Kansas City Informix User's Group.NET Framework Architecture

7. Kansas City Informix User's Group.NET Framework Architecture Common Language Runtime (CLR) –runtime environment that manages memory, garbage collection, code access security –managed code Framework Base Classes –provide I/O, collections, and threading functionality ADO.NET –provides data access API ASP.NET, Web Services & Forms –focuses on specific aspects of application development

8. Kansas City Informix User's Group ADO.NET Architecture.NET framework’s data management capabilities are encapsulated into a single component : ADO.NET ADO.NET contains: –Data Provider API which interacts with the actual data source –Content class, DataSet, which provides application program level abstraction for the data to/from the data source

9. Kansas City Informix User's Group What is a.NET Provider? Runtime class library that encapsulates a data access API for use by Microsoft.NET applications Set of specialized classes that implement standard ADO.NET interfaces and serve as a bridge between a data source and.NET applications

10. Kansas City Informix User's Group ADO.NET Architecture Client Application DataRelation DataSet DataTable DataColumn DataReaderDataAdapter Command Transaction Connection.NET Provider Classes

11. Kansas City Informix User's Group ADO.NET Architecture System.Data namespace – Microsoft class library for general data access functionality Default “bridge” providers for use with System.Data class and either an OLEDB provider or an ODBC driver –Provide IDS connectivity via Informix OLEDB or ODBC driver IBM.Data.Informix – Informix namespace which defines a class library implementing.NET interfaces for IBM Informix data access

12. Kansas City Informix User's Group ADO.NET Data Retrieval Two Models –Connected similar to typical client/server model obtains and maintains a connection with which to work –Disconnected by default, data is disconnected in.NET DataSet supports this model by presenting an in-memory view of a data source after data is retrieved, connection can be discarded changes performed on DataSet can be applied to the database with a new connection

13. Kansas City Informix User's Group Classes defined by the IDS.NET Provider IfxConnection – manages a connection to an Informix database IfxTransaction – represents a database transaction IfxCommand – manages execution of SQL commands IfxCommandBuilder – automatically generates commands, given a SELECT statement IfxParameter – represents a parameter to a Command object IfxParameterCollection – represents a collection of all parameters relevant to a Command object

14. Kansas City Informix User's Group Classes defined by the IDS.NET Provider IfxDataReader – provides forward-only, read-only access to data IfxDataAdapter –boundary between.NET provider and non-provider content classes –builds the DataSet objects (DataTable, DataColumn, DataRow etc), given a query and a DataSet instance IfxError, IfxException, IfxErrorCollection - for error and exception processing

15. Kansas City Informix User's Group IfxConnection Details Can be established: –programmatically using ConnectionString property of IfxConnection class –user environment –using SetNet to update the system registry database Order of precedence is ConnectionString, user environment, and then SetNet

16. Kansas City Informix User's Group Connection Attributes User and Password INFORMIXSERVER Database Name Service CLIENT_LOCALE DB_LOCALE Fetch Buffer Size Enlist (in a distributed transaction) Connection Pooling Connection Time Out Connection Lifetime Minimum Pool Size Maximum Pool Size Persist Security Info

17. Kansas City Informix User's Group Data Types in the IDS.Net Provider

18. Kansas City Informix User's Group Data Types in the IDS.Net Provider

19. Kansas City Informix User's Group Classes for Informix Data Types IfxDecimal IfxDateTime IfxTimeSpan IfxMonthSpan IfxRow IfxComplexLiteral IfxBlob IfxClob

20. Kansas City Informix User's Group Using MTS with the IDS.Net Provider Using CLR to implement COM+ configured classes is easier than implementing them with COM System.EnterpriseServices Namespace –provides the.NET classes, interfaces, structures, delegates, and enumerations with access to COM+ services ServicedComponent Class –base class for all COM+ services ContextUtil Class –wraps the CoGetObjectContext, the COM+ API for retrieving object context

21. Kansas City Informix User's Group Using MTS with the IDS.Net Provider Connection can be enlisted in distributed transaction –manually Set IfxConnection class Enlist property to false Application calls EnlistDistributedTransaction() method to enlist into the distributed transaction –automatically Set IfxConnection class Enlist property to true Application sets TransactionOption attribute to Required or RequiresNew MS DTC is still unmanaged code –New “plumbing” minimizes some data type conversions –Explicit resource deallocation may be required

22. Kansas City Informix User's Group API Tracing with the IDS.Net Provider IFXDOTNETTRACE – sets the level of tracing to be reported –Trace levels 0 = no tracing 1 = reports API calls entry & exit 2 = level 1 + function parameter values IFXDOTNETTRACEFILE- sets the log file where trace information is to be written

23. Kansas City Informix User's Group Integration with Microsoft Visual Studio.Net Emphasis on improving Visual Studio.NET development experience when using IBM (DB2 and IDS) DBMS IBM connections and database projects are depicted within Visual Studio: –Data Connections folder –Server Explorer tab –Solution Explorer shows IBM database projects Future release will add support for: –IDS SQL Editor –IDS Query Builder –Content and dynamic help

24. Kansas City Informix User's Group Installation and Deployment IDS.Net Provider requires.NET framework version 1.1 IDS.Net Provider will be included with CSDK (development) and I-Connect (runtime) distributions Requires a stored procedure to be installed in sysmaster database of each server instance

25. Kansas City Informix User's Group Roadmap of IDS.NET Support IDS.NET Provider completed technology preview in Q4 ‘03 IDS.NET Provider is currently available in the CSDK 2.81.TC3 release Subsequent releases of the provider will add additional functionality –Release mechanism will remain via CSDK and I- Connect products

26. Kansas City Informix User's Group Questions ?

27. Kansas City Informix User's Group Where to Get More Information IBM developerWorks Informix zone page: (www7b.boulder.ibm.com/dmdd/zones/informix/) Microsoft.NET Framework home page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework IBM Informix.NET Provider product documentation Contact us! –kolli@us.ibm.com –smoe@us.ibm.com