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User Guide - T24 Service Connector

Introduction

T24Service Connector is a component deployed in IIS and widely used by TWS.NET and TOCF.NET to

connect to T24. This T24 Service Connector is also available as ActiveX library. This type of T24 ServiceConnector allows a native vbs client to communicate with T24 by two message formats such as OFS &OFSML and it allows the native client to get the advantage of having simple load balancing , multiple ofssource targets etc.

This user guide explains how to deploy and configure T24 Service Connector as a web service and as an ActiveX library.

Overview

T24Service connector provides the following:

Connection factory/connection pooling – establishes connection with the configured TAFC agents.

Load balancing /high availability – provides load balancing within the configured TAFC agents.

OFSML-OFS Parser – Converts incoming OFSML request message to respective OFS requestmessage format and sends it to T24. Then the OFS response message is converted into therespective OFSML response message.

Assumptions

This document describes many concepts and methodologies that are highly technical in nature, and assuch prerequisite knowledge of the following is considered essential:

Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0

IIS 5.1 or later

MS Office Excel

Prerequisites

T24 Service Connector as Web Service


IIS 5.1 or later

T24 with R13 WS module installed

T24 Service Connector as ActiveX library

MS Office Excel


T24 with R13 WS module installed



Installation

T24 Service Connector as Web Service

T24ServiceConnector can be hosted in IIS by endpoint configuration. This type of architecture

implements a scalable mechanism to add additional connectors to T24ServiceConnector and leveragesWCF connection handling properties. For example: service throttling.

Copy the T24ServiceConnector directory from the install kit to the deployment server machine

Open IIS (start > Run > inetmgr)

Select the site to be hosted. (In this case, it is assumed as Default Web Site).

Right Click on it and select Add Virtual Directory

Provide the Alias name and the path of the T24ServiceConnector(copied)

After the virtual directory is created in IIS 7, right click and select ‘Convert to Application’.

(Because T24 Connector should be loaded as IIS Application.)

Refer configuration section of T24ServiceConnector to configure the connectors

After configuring, select and right click on T24ServiceConnector.svc in the hosted directory andselect browse to get the WSDL URL that can be used in TWS .NET or TOCF .NET to use T24

Service connector.

Installing T24 Service Connector as ActiveX library

The distribution pack (T24ServiceConnector [VERSION].zip) contains all the required contents of the T24Service Connector and the Service Connector ActiveX Installer.

This installer has to be used only to install Service Connector as ActiveX compatible library.

To install the T24 Service Connector as ActiveX library, double click the setup.exe under theServiceConnectorActiveX . This initiates the setup wizard.



Click next to continue

Select the installation location and continue with the installation





Click close to complete the installation.



T24ServiceConnector Logging

T24 Service Connector logging is configured in:

web.config for web service based deployment - this file is available under theT24ServiceConnector directory.

machine.config for ActiveX component - this file is available under the config folder of .NETFramework installed location.

The logging technology used by T24ServiceConnector is Microsoft Enterprise Logging. There are fivedifferent categories of logging such as:

Info – Provides the information logs

Timing – Provides the time consumed in each layer

Trace – Provides detailed descriptive logs

Warning –Provides the warning logs

Error – Provides the error logs

By default Logging is enabled and the category filter is defaulted to Info and Error. The logs are stored inthe below path:

<T24ServiceConnector install or deploy path>\External\Logs\ T24ServiceConnector.txt

This logging ensures that the log entries are consistent and that messages can be inter-related by meansof the request id.

Configuration

connectors.xml - The connection properties to T24 (TAFC agent) are specified in the connectorsconfiguration file and this file is available under conf folder under the deploy location of T24 Service

Connector and for ActiveX component the configuration file is available under conf folder located underthe installed location of MS Office.



Connectors.xml:

ID - Identifies the T24 service connector instance

URL - Unique T24 service connector instance (WCF Service) URL

Namespace reservation has to be done for this url. Namespace reservation assigns the rights for aportion of the HTTP URL namespace to a particular group of users. A reservation gives those users theright to create services that listen on that portion of the namespace. This has to be achieved by the OSlevel tools such as httpcfg /netsh.

For more info refer http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms733768.aspx

Alternatively, you can use the tool shipped with TWS.NET install kit to accomplish this task. This tool iscan be located in the following path inside the TWS.NET install kit

Open the HttpConfig.exe (as administrator)

1. Click on Permissions tab

2. Click on Add button

3. Enter the url for which the namespace has to be reserved

4. Click Ok

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms733768.aspx






5. Choose Add in the pop up

6.

Enter the user name

For example:

Provide the user/object name as IIS_IUSRS (should have administrator rights) in the objectnames text box

(or)

Provide the user/object name as Everyone in the object names text box

7. Click on check names and then Click Ok

8. Click Apply and then Click Ok to complete the process of namespace reservation for the specifieduser.

9. Click Apply and then Click Ok in the HttpConfig.exe utility window to save the changes & closethe tool window.



OFSSourceId - T24 OFS.SOURCE record used by this connection

HostIP - Comma separate list of TAFC agent instance. Syntax: <host>-<port>,<host>-<port>,…

LoadBalancing - When enabled, T24ServiceConnector creates a connection pool with evenly allocatedconnections among the list of available servers. If disabled then only High availability is ensured.

High availability - T24ServiceConnector attempts to access the first mentioned TAFC agent host detailsand creates connection pool, based on the configuration settings while the first request is initiated. Whilethe TAFC agent connected goes down for an unavailable state, then the request is routed to the nextavailable TAFC agent configured. Based on the Retry count configured the retry attempts are done.

Note: High availability of the Web service deployed in IIS is to be achieved by the user having the

mechanisms available in the market.

Charset - Character set configured in T24 (for example: UTF-8, ISO-8859-1, etc.)

MaxPool - The max. number of TAFC agent connections to spawn.

MinPool - The min. number of TAFC agent connections to spawn. This option pre-fills the pool.

IdleTimeout - Timeout (in milliseconds) after which an idle TAFC agent connection is released to thepool.

IncrementFactor - Increment factor used when spawning new TAFC agent connections.

ActionTimeout - Timeout (in seconds) after which TAFC agent terminates a connection that has notprocessed a request in the specified number of seconds.

RetryInterval - Wait interval (in milliseconds) before re-connecting after a second connection failure.

RetryAttempts - No. of reconnection attempts

SSL - Indicates whether to enable SSL encryption between T24ServiceConnector and TAFC agent.

DN - Specifies the SSL certificate’s distinguished name. Only used when enabling SSL.

Compression - Indicates whether to enable data compression between T24ServiceConnector and TAFC

agent.



CompressionThreshold - Specifies the minimum size (in bytes) for data packets to be compressed.

AllowInput - Indicates whether to allow users to enter data on the console output when requested by

T24 (for example: due to T24 input request, JBC debugger prompt, etc.)

EnvironmentVariables - Semicolon separated list of additional environment variables to be applied to a

TAFC agent connection (for example: .MYVAR1=AA; MYVAR2;BB)

AgentUser - TAFC agent user to use when TAFC agent is started in user authentication mode.

AgentPassword - TAFC agent password to use when TAFC agent is started in user authentication mode.

OFSConnector - T24Service Connector can connect to T24 through classic agent mode or through webservice. This property when set to “True” T24Service Connector connects to T24 using the OFSConnectorservice deployed in IIS. If not the connectivity is done through agent.

OFSConnectorUser, OFSConnectorPassword, OFSConnectorCompany is used to specify the usercredentials to connect through OFSConnector Service



Creating multiple T24 Service connectors to service multiple OFS.SOURCE

There are system scenarios which require different requests to be processed by different T24 instances,possibly configured with different OFS.SOURCE entries. The following Connectors.xml configuration filedefines two T24 Service connectors pointing to two TAFC agent instances configured to use differentOFS.SOURCE settings.

Web.config is used in configuring T24ServiceConnector logging, WCF service binding properties/reader

quotas/Connector properties as shown below. This configuration file is used only for web service baseddeployment. For ActiveX based component these configurations are done in machine.config file.



Using T24 Service Connector as ActiveX library

As mentioned earlier, T24 Service Connector as ActiveX library allows a native vbs client to communicate

with T24 by two message formats such as OFS & OFSML and allows the native client to get theadvantage of having simple load balancing , multiple ofs source targets etc. The method SendMessage isused to send a request to T24 and to get response from T24 as a string. SendMessage method takes 5

parameters:

SendMessage (“REQUEST MESSAGE”,”REQUEST ID”,”SERVICE CONNECTOR URL”, “SERVICE

CONNECTOR ID”,”MESSAGE FORMAT”);

REQUEST MESSAGE – OFS/OFSML request message

REQUEST ID- unique id used for logging and tracing per message

SERVICE CONNECTOR URL- the URL in service connector conf file

SERVICE CONNECTOR ID – the service connector id in service connector conf file

MESSAGE FORMAT – OFS/OFSML respective to the request message format

The installer has a sample vbs sample in it to test the working of T24 Service connector as ActiveX

library. To do so:

Open the T24withActiveX.xlsm which is at Service connector installed directory\Sample\

Enter the OFS request and click Send OFS button



The Activex (VBA code) used for this sample is

NowT24 Service Connector allows native VBS client to communicate with T24.

Resources

Namespace reservation: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms733768.aspx





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