Natural Natural Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Version 6.3.12 for OpenVMS October 2012 This document applies to Natural Version 6.3.12 for OpenVMS. Specifications contained herein are subject to change and these changes will be reported in subsequent release notes or new editions. Copyright © 1984-2012 Software AG, Darmstadt, Germany and/or Software AG USA, Inc., Reston, VA, United States of America, and/or their licensors. Detailed information on trademarks and patents owned by Software AG and/or its subsidiaries is located at http://documentation.softwareag.com/legal/. Use of this software is subject to adherence to Software AG's licensing conditions and terms. These terms are part of the product doc- umentation, located at http://documentation.softwareag.com/legal/ and/or in the root installation directory of the licensed product(s). This software may include portions of third-party products. 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Document ID: NATOV-NNATRPC-6312-20121005 Table of Contents Preface .............................................................................................................................. vii 1 Introducing Natural RPC ................................................................................................ 1 General Information ................................................................................................... 2 Natural RPC Operation in Non-Conversational Mode ............................................. 4 Natural RPC Operation in Conversational Mode ...................................................... 7 Conversational versus Non-Conversational Mode ................................................... 8 Database Transactions .............................................................................................. 11 Handling of Limits Set with Profile Parameters LT, MAXCL, MADIO, and MT on Server ................................................................................................................... 12 Location of Conversations ........................................................................................ 12 Natural RPC Terminology ........................................................................................ 13 2 Prerequisites and Preparatory Information .................................................................. 15 Products Involved .................................................................................................... 16 Natural Statements Involved ................................................................................... 17 Natural Utilities for Use with Natural RPC ............................................................. 17 Application Programming Interfaces for Use with Natural RPC ............................ 18 Software AG IDL to Natural Mapping .................................................................... 19 3 Restrictions and Limitations .......................................................................................... 25 User Context Transfer .............................................................................................. 26 System Variable Transfer .......................................................................................... 26 Application-Independent Variables ......................................................................... 26 Parameter Handling in Error Situations .................................................................. 27 Variable Arrays in Subprograms .............................................................................. 27 X-Arrays ................................................................................................................... 27 Groups and Interface Objects ................................................................................... 28 Group Arrays on the RPC Server Side ..................................................................... 28 Unsupported Natural Data Formats ........................................................................ 28 EntireX RPC Server .................................................................................................. 29 Using VSAM ............................................................................................................. 29 Natural Statement Reactions .................................................................................... 29 Notes on Natural Statements on the Server ............................................................. 30 4 Setting Up a Natural RPC Environment ....................................................................... 31 Setting Up a Natural Client ...................................................................................... 32 Setting Up a Natural Server ..................................................................................... 34 Setting Up an EntireX Broker Access ....................................................................... 37 Setting Up an EntireX Broker Environment ............................................................ 40 5 Starting a Natural RPC Server ....................................................................................... 41 Preliminaries before Starting a Natural RPC Server ................................................ 42 Starting a Natural RPC Server in a Mainframe Online Environment (all TP Monitors) .................................................................................................................. 43 Starting a Natural RPC Server in a Mainframe Online Environment (CICS only) .......................................................................................................................... 43 iii Natural Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Starting a Natural RPC Server in a Mainframe Online Environment (Com-plete only) .......................................................................................................................... 45 Starting a Batch Server in a Mainframe Environment ............................................. 46 Starting a Natural RPC Server in a Windows Environment .................................... 48 Starting a Natural RPC Server in a UNIX Environment .......................................... 49 Starting a Natural RPC Server in an OpenVMS Environment ................................ 49 Considerations for Mainframe Natural RPC Servers with Replicas ........................ 49 Starting a Natural RPC Server Using the RPC Server Front-End (z/OS Batch Mode only) .......................................................................................................................... 51 Starting a Natural RPC Server Using the RPC Server Front-End (CICS only) ........ 54 6 Terminating a Natural RPC Server ................................................................................ 57 Using SYSRPC .......................................................................................................... 58 Using EntireX System Management Hub ................................................................ 58 Using Application Programming Interface USR2073N ........................................... 58 User Exit NATRPC99 ............................................................................................... 59 Server Termination When Using an Attach Manager .............................................. 60 7 Terminating an EntireX Broker Service ......................................................................... 61 Using SYSRPC .......................................................................................................... 62 Using EntireX System Management Hub ................................................................ 62 Using Application Programming Interface USR2075N ........................................... 62 8 Operating a Natural RPC Environment ........................................................................ 65 Specifying RPC Server Addresses ............................................................................ 66 Interface Objects and Automatic RPC Execution ..................................................... 71 Modifying RPC Profile Parameters during a Natural Session ................................. 72 Executing Server Commands ................................................................................... 72 Logon to a Server Library ........................................................................................ 73 Using the Logon Option ........................................................................................... 74 Using Compression .................................................................................................. 75 Using Secure Socket Layer ....................................................................................... 76 Monitoring the Status of an RPC Session ................................................................. 77 Retrieving Runtime Settings of a Server .................................................................. 85 Setting/Getting Parameters for EntireX ................................................................... 86 Handling Errors ....................................................................................................... 88 User Exits before