Guardian API programming

Prerequisites

• Concepts and Facilities course
• TAL/pTAL Programming course or C Programming in the Guardian Environment course

Audience

• Systems programmers
• Application programmers
• Programmer analysts

Ways to save

Benefits to you

• Coding for interprocess communication
• Developing applications that access enscribe files
• How to handle terminal input and output
• Different types of system messages
• Creating and managing new processes
• Available timing facilities
• How nowait I/O can be used to improve application performance

Next Steps

HP NonStop Kernel Architecture U4178S

Course outline

Introduction to guardian API

• Major functions of the HP NonStop Kernel operating system
• Identifying the required header or declaration file for any Guardian procedure
• The HP NonStop Kernel's message-based architecture
• Lab exercise: Determine the appropriate procedure to use for a given function
• Lab exercise: Identify the parameter types used by a given procedure
• Lab exercise: Determine whether a given procedure returns a value or sets the condition code

File system concepts

• Concept of a file and purpose of an I/O process and different types of file names
• Coding the procedure calls that are common to all file accesses
• Using the DEFINE and ASSIGN functions to equate physical and logical file names
• Coding the procedure calls to perform file-name conversion
• Lab exercise: Study the different methods of supplying a file name at execution time
• Lab exercise: Gain experience with the Inspect debugger

Interprocess communication

• Requester-server application model
• Coding the procedures for interprocess communication
• Differences between system and application messages and TACL program startup protocol
• Lab exercise: Code a program to use the INITIALIZER or get_startup_msg procedure to handle the TACL program startup protocol
• Lab exercise: Code the program to handle system open and close messages

Enscribe database access

• Enscribe file types and coding the procedures to create enscribe files
• Coding the procedures to access and manage access of any enscribe file and appropriate error checking
• Lab exercise: Code programs to perform enscribe file accessing including updating
• Lab exercise: Apply record locks

Terminal input and output

• Determining the home terminal of a process and describe its use
• Procedures used to write to and read from a terminal
• Errors that can occur during I/O
• Numeric conversions that might need to be performed on input data and use of the FIXSTRING procedure
• Lab exercise: Code a program to determine the process home terminal and perform I/O operations to it
• Lab exercise: Use interprocess communication to pass data to a server process

Nowait I/O processing

• Coding the procedures for nowait I/O operations
• One function of the SETMODE procedure and Internal and external request management
• Lab exercise: Modify a given program to perform nowait I/O on selected files

Process management

• Calling the procedures used to create a new process
• Calling the PROCESS_GETINFOLIST_ procedure to obtain information about processes
• HIGHPIN and HIGHREQUESTERS object file flags and Lab exercise: Code a procedure to start executing a new process

HP NonStop TS/MP

• Major components of the HP NonStop Transaction Services/MP (HP NonStop TS/MP) environment
• Capabilities of a Pathsend requester and procedures used by Pathsend requesters
• Design considerations of HP NonStop TS/MP servers
• Lab exercise: Modify a program to use the Pathsend procedures

Data integrity and application availability

• Components of the HP NonStop TM/MP subsystem
• Functions performed by HP NonStop TM/MP and techniques used to ensure application availability