Reference Manual
CHAPTER 3. Connection and Communication Parameters
If you experience problems with client/server network communications, there are a number of command line parameters for both the client and the server. These parameters enable you to work around peculiarities of different network protocol implementations.
You can supply the network communication parameters on the server command line as in the following example:
dbsrv6 -x tcpip(PARM1=value1;PARM2=value2;. . .),IPX
From the client side, the communications parameters are entered as the CommLinks communication parameter:
CommLinks=tcpip(PARM1=value1;PARM2=value2;. . .),IPX
If there are spaces in a parameter, the network communication parameters must be enclosed in quotation marks to be parsed properly by the system command interpreter:
dbsrv6 -x "tcpip(PARM1=value 1;PARM2=value 2;...),IPX" CommLinks="tcpip(PARM1=value 1;PARM2=value 2;...),IPX"
The quotation marks are required under UNIX if more than one parameter is given, because UNIX interprets the semicolon as a command separator.
Boolean parameters are turned on with YES, ON, or 1, and are turned off with any of NO, OFF, and 0. The parameters are case-insensitive.
The examples provided should all be entered on a single line; you can also include them in a configuration file and use the @ server or client command-line switch to invoke the configuration file.
The parameters currently available are as follows.
BROADCAST parameter [BCAST]TCP/IP
BROADCAST specifies the special IP address used by your TCP/IP protocol implementation to identify a broadcast message. The most common broadcast IP address is 255.255.255.255, the default setting.
Some TCP/IP implementations instead use a broadcast address consisting of the network IP address portion, with 255 as the remaining integers. For example, if the network portion of your IP address is 197, some TCP/IP implementations use 197.255.255.255 as the broadcast IP address. If your network portion is 192.023, the broadcast IP address would be 197.023.255.255.
255.255.255.255
DOBROADCAST parameterTCP/IP (all platforms), IPX (Windows 95 and NT only)
With DOBROADCAST=YES, a broadcast is performed to search for a server if the server is not found in the bindery.
With DOBROADCAST=NO, 0, or OFF, no broadcast is performed to search for a database server. In this case, you must specify the server host with the HOST option.
For IPX only, you can also supply an address for the DOBROADCAST argument. The address serves as a mask for the HOST parameter, and allows you to specify a non-zero network number. This is intended for use when broadcasting over a router. The network number is assigned by the network administrator.
In IPX, a node address consists of six numbers (up to 255 each) and the network address consists of four digits, separated by colons.
Yes
The following command starts a client without broadcasting to search for a database server. Instead, the server is looked for only on the computer named silver.
dbclient -x tcpip(DOBROADCAST=NO;HOST=silver) asademo
On UNIX, the options must be enclosed in quotation marks:
dbclient -x "tcpip(DOBROADCAST=NO;HOST=silver)" asademo
On an IPX network, the following parameter specifies a broadcast over network 2:
-x ipx(dobroadcast=255:255:255:255:255:255/0:0:0:2)
DLL parameterTCP/IP (Windows 95, Windows NT, OS/2)
To support untested TCP/IP protocol stacks where the required networking interface functions are in DLLs that differ from the default protocol stack. The client or server looks for its required functionality in the named DLLs.
On Windows and Windows NT, the default is winsock.dll.
On OS/2, the defaults are tcp32dll.dll and so32dll.dll.
The following command starts a server with the protocol interface functions in abc.dll and xyz.dll:
dbsrv6 -x tcpip(dll=abc.dll;dll=xyz.dll) asademo
EXTENDEDNAME parameterIPX (platforms other than Windows 95 or NT)
According to the Novell standard for legal SAP names, the following characters are not allowed:
\ / : ; , * ? + -
If you start a server named "asademo-1", the default behavior is to strip out the - and try to start a server asademo1. By turning on ExtendedName, the name is left untouched.
Caution Users should be wary of using this option as it is contrary to the SAP standard.
No.
The following command starts a NetWare server with name asademo-1.
load DBSRV6.nlm -x ipx(ExtendedName=Yes) asademo-1
HOST parameter [IP]TCP/IP (all platforms)
HOST specifies additional machines outside the immediate network to be searched by the client library. On the server, the search is carried out to avoid starting a server with a duplicate name.
For TCP/IP, the hostname or a dot-separated IP address may be used. For IPX, an address of the form a:b:c:d:e:f/g:h:i:j is used, where a:b:c:d:e:f is the node number (Ethernet card address) of the server, and g:h:i:j is the network number. The server prints this addressing information during startup if the -Z switch is used.
You can use a semicolon-separated list of addresses to search for more than one machine. Also, you can append a port number to an IP address, using a colon as separator.
IP is a synonym for HOST.
No additional machines.
The following data source fragment instructs the client to look on the machines "kangaroo" and 197.75.209.222 (port 2369) to find a database server called asademo:
... ENG=asademo CommLinks=tcpip(HOST=kangaroo;HOST=197.75.209.222:2369) ...
For UNIX, quotation marks are required around the tcpip options:
dbclient -x "tcpip(HOST=kangaroo;HOST=197.75.209.222)" asademo
MAXLANA parameterNetBIOS
Each path through a NetBIOS protocol stack is assigned a LAN adapter number. By default, the server looks through all possible numbers up to 255. To speed up server startup, you can truncate the search for valid LAN adapters at a specified value using the MAXLANA parameter.
255
The following command line looks only at LAN adapters with numbers less than 10 to identify active protocol stacks:
dbsrv6 -x netbios(MAXLANA=10) asademo
MYIP parameterTCP/IP
The MyIP parameter is provided for machines with more than one network adapter.
Each adapter has an IP address. By default, the database server uses the first network card it finds. If you wish your database server to use more than one network card, specify the address of each card in the MyIP parameter.
If the keyword NONE is supplied as the IP number, no attempt is made to determine the addressing information. This option is intended primarily for clients on operating systems where this operation is expensive.
Under Windows 95 or Windows NT, this option can be used multiple times for machines with multiple IP addresses.
You can optionally append a port number to the IP address, separated by a colon.
The following command line (entered all on one line) instructs the server to use two network cards, one with a specified port number.
dbsrv6 -x tcpip(MyIP=192.75.209.12:2367,192.75.209.32) c:\asa6\asademo.db
The following data source fragment instructs the client to make no attempt to determine addressing information.
... CommLinks= tcpip(MyIP=NONE) ...
REGISTERBINDERY parameter [ REGBIN]IPX (Windows 95 and NT only)
The database server attempts to register its name with any active binderies on the network when loading the IPX link. To disable this name registration, set RegisterBindery to NO, FALSE or 0. In this case, the client library must be able to locate the database server over IPX by broadcasting packets.
TRUE
SEARCHBINDERY parameter [BINSEARCH]IPX (Windows 95 and NT only)
With SEARCHBINDERY=NO, 0, or OFF no NetWare bindery is searched for a database server.
Yes
SERVERPORT parameter [ PORT]TCP/IP (all platforms)
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority has assigned the Adaptive Server Anywhere database server port number 2638 to use for TCP/IP communications. However, applications are not disallowed from using this reserved port, and this may result in an addressing collision between the database server and another application.
In the case of the database server, the ServerPort option designates the port number on which to communicate using TCP/IP.
In a data source, the ServerPort option informs the client of the port or ports on which database servers are listening for TCP/IP communication. The client broadcasts to every port that is specified on the ServerPort parameter to find the server.
2638
Start a network database server:
dbsrv6 -x tcpip -n server1
Port number 2638 is now taken.
Attempt to start another database server:
dbsrv6 -x tcpip -n server2
This fails with an error Unable to Initialize Communication Links, because the port is currently allocated.
Start another database server, assigning a different port number to it:
dbsrv6 -x tcpip(ServerPort=2639) -n server2
This should succeed as long as 2639 is not a reserved port, and no other application has allocated it.
SESSIONS parameterNetBIOS
Sets the maximum number of clients that can communicate with the server at one time through a single LAN adapter. The default setting is operating-system specific. The value is an integer, with maximum value 254.
Operating system specific. On Windows NT, the default is 16.
The following statement starts a server with a database named asademo, allowing 200 NetBIOS connections.
dbsrv6 -x netbios(sessions=200) asademo.db
TDS parameterTCP/IP, NamedPipes
To disallow TDS connections to a database server, set TDS to NO. If you want to ensure that only encrypted connections are made to your server, these port options are the only way to disallow TDS connections.
YES
The following command starts a database server using the TCP/IP protocol, but disallowing connections from Open Client or jConnect applications.
dbsrv6 -x tcpip(TDS=NO) ...
THREADS parameterIPX (OS/2, Windows 95 and Windows NT)
THREADS specifies the number of threads that are used for reading network communications. Integers from one to ten are allowed. It has been found that two threads produces good performance, but the option is provided as a performance parameter that you can tune.
2
The following command starts a database server to use the IPX protocol only, using three threads.
dbsrv6 -x ipx(threads=3) c:\asa6\asademo.db
TIMEOUT parameter [TO]TCP/IP, IPX (all platforms)
TIMEOUT specifies the length of time, in seconds, to wait for a response when establishing communications. You may wish to try longer times if you are having trouble establishing TCP/IP communications.
5 seconds.
The following data source fragment starts a TCP/IP communications link only, with a timeout period of twenty seconds.
... CommLinks=tcpip(TO=20) ...
THREADSTATS parameter [STATS]IPX (Windows 95 and Windows NT only)
This option creates a file into which IPX thread statistics are written. Currently, the only statistic written to the file is the number of packets received by each executing IPX thread.
NULL
The following statement places the statistics in the file ipxstat.txt in the current directory.
dbsrv6 -x ipx(threadstats=ipxstat.txt) c:\asa6\asademo.db
WSAVERSION parameter [WSAVER]TCP/IP (Windows 3.x, 95, and NT), IPX (Windows 95 and NT only)
The database server for 95, and NT requires a version of the winsock dll of 1.1 or higher. This requirement can be relaxed to a lesser version of winsock if the same functionality as version 1.1 has been implemented by a vendor. The major version number appears in the high byte of the value, the minor version number appears in the low byte of the value.
0x101 (version 1.1)
The following command ( to be entered all on one line) starts a database server even though the Winsock DLL is version 1.0.
dbsrv6 -x tcpip(wsaversion=0x100) c:\asa6\asademo.db
The following data source fragment instructs a client to start even though the Winsock DLL is version 1.0.
... CommLinks=tcpip(wsaversion=0x100) ENG=asademo ...