FAQs - September 2010

Limitations of Advantage Local Server

Advantage provides the Advantage Local Server (ALS) with every one of our supported clients. ALS provides an easy mechanism for developing an Advantage enabled application as well as a no-cost solution for peer-to-peer solutions. However, ALS has several limitations.

ALS does not include support for any of the following server related functions; transactions, online backup and replication. ALS is limited to five concurrent connections and cannot be used from a middle tier such as a web server or in a terminal server session.

ALS does include support for all other data dictionary functionality such as: referential integrity, stored procedures, triggers and notifications. It also respects all of the same commands as the full Advantage Database Server (ADS) product allowing for a near seamless migration from ALS to ADS.

Performance Improvements in Advantage 10

A new whitepaper comparing the performance of Advantage 9.x and Advantage 10 is now available. This whitepaper discusses several scenarios where version 10 outperforms version 9. These include transaction processing, multi-client performance and stored procedure execution. You can get a copy of this whitepaper using this link. For a complete list of Advantage white papers visit the official Advantage Database Server site.

6414 Error

A 6414 error "Connection forcefully refused" can occur if the packets sent to the Advantage server are incorrect. This is a defense mechanism against hacks and other types of attacks. With the release of Advantage 10 the communication protocol used by the client has changed slightly. More information is now being sent when the client connects making the packet size larger. Because the packet size is different if you attempt to connect using a version 10 client to an older version of the server you may receive a 6414 error.

Generally when connecting to an older serve with a newer client you should receive a 6316 error. However, some customers have been reporting the 6414 error. You can get more information in this KB article.

.NET Data Provider Load Errors

When distributing an application built with the Advantage .NET Data Provider I would recommend placing the DLL in the directory with your application. I would also recommend placing other required Advantage DLLs ( ACE32.dll, AXCWS32.dll, etc… ) in the application directory. By doing this the provider does not need to be registered in the Global Assembly Cache ( GAC ) on your target machines.

You should set some properties in your project to ensure that your application will find the provider correctly. First I recommend setting the Copy Local property to true and the Specific Version property to false for the Advantage.Data.Provider reference. You should also make sure that you are distributing the correct version of the DLL, most will use the ADO.NET 2.0 version ( i.e. version 10.0.2.3 ).