Features and Benefits

Quick Install

Release Notes

Principles of Operation

All Documentation

Sample Code

 

SoftArtisans, Inc.(tm)

http://www.softartisans.com

FileManagerTX(tm)

Transactional (MTS) File Manipulation in an easy to use package

Version 1.0

October 2002

Thank you for using FileManagerTX(tm)!


Features and Benefits

FileManagerTX(tm) is an innovative way to manage files reliably. FileManagerTX, in combination with Microsoft Transaction Server, allows the ASP or Visual Basic developer to place file operations within a transaction. All file operations performed by FileManagerTX will either complete successfully, or roll back to a stable pre-transaction state.

If you are using SQL Server, Microsoft Message Queue, or any transacted resource, FileManagerTX will seamlessly integrate and participate in the transaction. The failure of any single operation within the transaction will cause all other actions to roll back, without complicated user programming.

FileManagerTX is a COM client component and a complete MTS Resource Manager, contained in a single, easy to install MTS package.

Requirements: Key Features:

 

Pricing:

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Quick Installation

To install FileManagerTX:

  1. Start the MTS Explorer, which can be found in the Start menu, under "Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack".
  2. Navigate to "Packages Installed" and right click on it.
  3. Select "New", then "Package"
  4. Press the button "Install pre-built packages".
  5. Press the "Add..." button and select the SAFileMgrTX.PAK file.
  6. You can accept all other defaults. FileManagerTX is now ready to use.

To uninstall FileManagerTX:

  1. Start the MTS Explorer, which can be found in the Start menu, under "Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack".
  2. Navigate to "FileManagerTX", under "Packages Installed" and right click on it.
  3. Select "Delete".
  4. Delete the SAFileMgrTX.PAK from your server's hard disk.
  5. FileManagerTX is now uninstalled.

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Release Notes

There are no known issues at this time.

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Principles of Operation

FileManagerTX consists of two parts: a user-programmable component to perform file operations, and a MTS Resource Manager that operates transparently behind the scenes.

To transactionally manipulate files, simply invoke the appropriate method on the FileManagerTX object. FileManagerTX will immediately report if the method call is likely to succeed. For example, a CreateFileTx will fail immediately if the destination file already exists and is read-only. All files participating in the transaction are locked by FileManagerTX until the Two Phase Commit completes.

During the transaction commit, the FileManagerTX Resource Manager will participate in the MTS Two Phase Commit. If any operation fails, FileManagerTX will be notified and no file operations will be executed. If all operations are successful, FileManagerTX will execute the file operations during Phase I. After all resource managers have completed their actions, Phase II will execute. If any Phase II operation fails, FileManagerTX will reverse all executed file operations and restore the files to their original state, thus the ACID properties of the transaction are guaranteed.

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All Documentation

The documentation is preliminary as of this release. The complete documentation will be available at the SoftArtisans Support Site http://support.softartisans.com.

To instantiate FileManager, use:
In Visual Basic:

    ' Create a Transaction Context
    Set objTxCtx = CreateObject("TxCtx.TransactionContext")

    ' Create an instance of FileManager in this transaction
    Set pFileMgr = objTxCtx.CreateInstance("SoftArtisans.FileManagerTX")

In Visual Basic, we are explicitly creating a transaction context. FileManagerTX will automatically rendez-vous with the transaction context. Alternately, in Visual Basic, you can create an MTS component and mark your component as "Requires a transaction" in MTS. By creating a FileManagerTX instance within your component, the transaction context will already be available.

In ASP:
    <%@ TRANSACTION=Required %%gt;
    <%
    Set oFM = Server.CreateObject("SoftArtisans.FileManagerTX")
    ' -- Create a new file
    Response.write("Creating file: c:\temp\foo.txt <br>")
    oFM.CreateFileTX  "c:\temp\foo.txt"
    %>

There are four properties implemented at this time:

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Sample Code

There are several code samples using ASP and Visual Basic. We are constantly enlarging our code sample base: please let us know if we can add other samples.

Please see the .\Samples subdirectory included with this installation.

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Copyright © 2002, SoftArtisans, Inc.