Server Agent Administration

Agent-Specific Settings

OpenLink database agents are database clients built using the SQL Call Level or Embedded SQL interfaces of the respective supported backend database engines. Thus, the process of configuring or administering a database agent is similar in essence to what you would have to do if you were administering a native database client.

Database engines use environment variables to creating a database specific operating space within which database clients and servers interact, these environment typically address the following important database session related issues:

• Database server identification - your database client needs to be able to connect to the appropriate database server, many database implementations support multiple database servers instances listening for client connections at different network ports on the same machine (e.g. OpenLink Virtuoso, Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase, Progress, Informix etc.).

• Database engine base installation directory - many database engine environments comprise shared or dynamically linked libraries and other runtime components that are required by database clients. Thus, there is a need for database clients to have a sense of what the actual base or root point of the database engine installation is, this enables the construct of a component search path (similar to the "PATH" operating system environment variable) at runtime.

• Database session resource allocation - most database engines allow database session resources to be configured for clients via environment variables (sometimes these variables simply identify resource configuration files).

• Database session optimization - some database environments allow query optimizers, network packet sizes, and records transmission values for database clients to be configured via environment variables.

The sections that follow address specific environment settings that affect the configuration of your OpenLink database agents, the values provided can supplanted values used in the Admin Assistant configuration examples provided in the prior section.