Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Development:
Progress Dynamics Administration

Defining session services

A session service is made up of a logical and a physical service, both of which have the same service type. A service type is a named object with associated management objects that control all services of a particular type. For example, a session service for database access would have the logical and the physical services defined with the database service type. Each service type has its own Service Type Manager that the Connection Manager calls for services of that type.

A logical service lets you define the more abstract characteristics of a service type, which provides greater flexibility in service definition to handle various local and remote configurations of the same physical services. A logical service is a separate process that runs locally or remotely and requires connection parameters to establish communication between a session and a service. Logical service names must be unique so that connection to the service can be completely abstracted from the developer. The logical service and session type combination determines which physical service will be used.

The physical service determines the actual connection parameters. For example, consider an application deployed to several sites. The application has a single logical service for its application database. But, there is a different physical service for each site that describes how to connect to the application database on that site’s network. To configure the session type on each site, you only need to change which physical service is listed in the session type’s description.

Service types

You can view the service types that are registered in the Repository from the Service Type Control window.

To view and edit service types:

From the Administration window, choose Session Service Type Control. The Service Type Control window appears. You can see the predefined service types (AppServer partition, Database, Web service, and JMS Partition) and their associated manager and maintenance files, as shown:



To edit a service type, double-click it in the browse. The Service Type Maintenance window appears, as shown:

You can build and define your own service types by creating Service Type Managers that adhere to Progress Dynamics requirements. For more information on creating managers, see OpenEdge Development: Progress Dynamics Advanced Development .

Creating a logical service

By defining a logical service, you can change the physical service when you deploy an application without changing any code. For example, your code can reference the logical service called DynSports. The physical service name can be dynsportsn for a network service. If you change the physical service to dynsportsl for a local connection to the database, you do not have to change your code because the logical service name remains DynSports.

To create a logical service:

From the Administration window, choose Session Logical Service Control. The Logical Service Control window appears, as shown:



Choose Add record . The Logical Service Maintenance window appears, as shown:



Type a Logical service code. For example, DynSports.
Note: In the case of the AppServer, this code replaces the partition name that is used by ADM code written or generated outside of Progress Dynamics. If an application makes use of ADM code that has the partition name coded into the container objects, you must specify these partition names as Logical service code values. Also note that if you alter the Logical service code value after you create it, you might render the earlier ADM code unusable.
Type a value for Logical service description field. For example, DynSports application database.
Select a Service type value. In this example, it is Database.
Specify the appropriate values for the remaining properties by selecting or clearing the toggle boxes. Table 2–2 describes the remaining properties.

Table 2–2: Logical service properties

Property	Description
Can run locally	Specifies if the service can run locally. If it cannot run locally (unselected), you must have an entry in the session service table to use the partition.
System owned	Specifies if the service is system owned. System owned services cannot be modified unless you have the appropriate permissions. Note: The framework does not enable this feature automatically. To fully implement this feature, you must provide code in the trigger for the table, or in the SDO linked to the table containing the system owned field.
Write to config	Specifies if the service, and its associated physical service, should be included in generated configuration files.
Connect at startup	Specifies if the framework should connect to the service at startup. Web services, especially, can slow the start of an application. You might get better performance by having them connected the first time they are needed, instead of at startup.

Choose Save to save the new logical service to the database.
Note: The Logical Service Maintenance window contains two additional tab folders: Session Services and Service. The Session Services tab displays the session services for the selected logical service, after you associate the new logical service with one or more session services. The Service tab lets you define a session service for the selected logical service.

Creating a physical service

A physical service provides the specific connection parameters that are required to connect a physical device or service to a session.

To create a physical service:

From the Administration window, choose Session Physical Service Control. The Physical Service Control window appears, as shown:



Choose Add record . The Physical Service Maintenance window appears, as shown:



Type a Physical service code value. For example, dynsports.
Type a value for the Physical service description field. For example, DynSports application database.
Select a Service type value. In this example, it is Database.
Specify the appropriate Connection parameters values.

Depending on the service type you selected, a different set of connection parameters is displayed. For more information on connection parameters, see the online help and/or OpenEdge Deployment: Startup Command and Parameter Reference .

Choose Save.