Eloquence A.05.00 Release Notes

Eloquence Remote Database Service on the PC Platform

This chapter describes how to use the Eloquence remote database service on the PC platform.
Please refer to Installation of Eloquence Software on the PC Platform for informations on installation and PC platform prerequisites.

Please refer to Eloquence database manual, appendix E for a detailed description of the Eloquence database library functions. This document will focus on differences, specific to the PC platform only.

PC platform considerations

To use the Eloquence remote database access, the file ELOQDB.DLL must be installed either in your WINDOWS directory, or in a directory, which is referenced in the PATH environment variable.
You also need a WINSOCK.DLL installed. This DLL provides the network connection. It will be loaded by ELOQDB.DLL.

Specifying remote database

To access a database on a remote server, you have to specify the hostname and an absolute path name, where the database is located on the server, separated by a colon (:).
For example:

If your HP 9000 has the hostname server and the database, you want to access is /var/db/XXDB, you have to specify the following database name:

   server:/var/db/XXDB

Please note, that the eloqd and eloqnd daemons must be started on the server, that the remote hostname must be contained in your HOSTS file and that the service name eloq (defined in your SERVICES file) uses the same port numbers on your local PC and remote server.

Character set

All strings in the database are automatically converted from Roman8 character set to ISO 8859/1 character set used by MS Windows.

Not all characters are convertible between Roman8 and ISO 8859/1 character sets. Some characters are unique to a single character set.
If you packed some numeric data into a string variable, the content will probably be garbled.

Common problems

Network software not loaded
You either did not load the required network software or your network software is not compatible.
Connection refused
Remote host does not accept the connection. Either there is no server (eloqnd) for the requested service running on the remote host, or you installed different port numbers for the eloq service on your local PC than on the remote host.
Service eloq (tcp) not found in your SERVICES file
You did not install the eloq service name in your SERVICES file.
Host name not found in your HOSTS file
You did not define the host name name in your HOSTS file.

Development environment

The DLL providing Eloquence remote database access has been built using the Microsoft Visual C/C++ compiler.
Your development environment must be compatible.

Coding considerations

You may easily migrate your HP-UX source code to a PC platform. It's compatible with the following exceptions:

The status array must be of type long on the PC platform, whereas it may be either int or long on the HP-UX platform.
There is no stdout or stderr on MS Windows. Fatal error messages are displayed in a dialog box.
Only remote access is possible through the use of ELOQDB.DLL. Local operation is not supported.

To compile a program using the remote database access, you have to define the REMOTE_ONLY symbol to the preprocessor and link it with the ELOQDB.LIB import library.

Last update: 95/11/08