ODBC within an ASP environment

The Application Service Provider or ASP (sometimes called VSP or HSP) model, where companies outsource their applications and its management/support to a third party company, is now becoming popular again. Here multiple applications will reside on a single high-end Unix server, each with its own legal entity where user access and security of data is imperative. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that the Connection Manager is used to service ODBC connections in an ASP environment.

Restricted Access Control

The Connection Manager allows access to an ODBC/KCML service to be restricted via user login and network address access control lists. These are known as valid users and valid clients respectively. Separate access control lists can be defined for each application service.

This gives much more flexibility and will be much easier to administrate -- a key feature in the ASP model where monetary and technical resources have to be effectively utilised to reduce costs.

Indpendent Licensing

Each application must also be independently licensed. This is achieved by defining a unique value of the $SYSTEMID environment variable for each application service. This requires a SYSTEMID entry in the [ODBC] section that matches that in the [KCML6] or [KCML7] sections of the licence file. So, for example, say $SYSTEMID has a value of 4, the [KCML] & [ODBC] sections of the licence file would be of the form:-

[KCML7]
Users=24,Serial=C69262547X!7a97 5aa4 6ef7 26a2
Users=8,Serial=C211242f6X!a721 f5a6 94b0 0c38
SYSTEMID=4!12a2 5ca0 af9e 71d5
[ODBC]
Users=24,Serial=C17264587X!7a97 7104 7e07 fa52
Users=8,Serial=C09123491X!e7f1 05d6 94b0 0c38
SYSTEMID=4!0d92 8c70 7e9e 0cba

whose filename should include the value of $SYSTEMID, in this case lic.4.txt

Configuration

Server

The file name of the application's database catalogue should be defined in the service section of kconf.xml. The service will also define a value of SYSTEMID, in its environment list, that will be used by both ODBC & KCML.

Client

The ODBC driver will connect to the default ODBC port of 747. To configure the ODBC driver to use the Connection Manager's port append ,790 or :790 server's hostname or I.P. address.
For example: