question about compression with IConnect

Is anyone aware of any way of compressing the data using IConnect or any middleware? In our current environment, we have quite a few clients connected to our 9.4 IDS via WAN. The windows GUI client application is written in MFC which uses a DLL that connects to the server using ESQL/C. The ESQL/C uses IConnect version 2.81tc3. The performance on the server is sufficient (CPU is usually 90% idle). The performance for the LAN clients is sufficient; however, the performance for the remote clients is not. Our main MFC developer has performed experiments by writing his own middle layer with compression instead of connecting using IConnect. These experiments show that IConnect is a major bottleneck. While the native speed of the WAN links is indeed slower than the LAN, the experiements got the WAN performance level up to an accetptable level. However, this was only an experiment, and not pursued to develop a full solution due to the complexity and cost of the implementation. We've then talked to IBM/Informix but it did not go anywhere. The primary suggestion we got is to move from HDR to ER but the complication and the cost of ER is not preferrable at this point. Our version of ideal solution is that the IConnect layer can be optimized, potentially with built-in compression. However, it seems compression is available but only among the servers participated in the ER. Why isn't it available to the client connection? has anybody knew or written any middle layer for compression to deal with the WAN traffic? Any suggestion is appreciated. Thank you. -Vivien Kobayashi

Vivien Kobayashi wrote: > Is anyone aware of any way of compressing the data using IConnect or > any middleware? > <snip> > > Our version of ideal solution is that the IConnect layer can be > optimized, potentially with built-in compression. However, it seems > compression is available but only among the servers participated in the > ER. Why isn't it available to the client connection? has anybody knew > or written any middle layer for compression to deal with the WAN > traffic? Any suggestion is appreciated. Well - you COULD write a network listener in <fill in language of your choice> to listen on the client machine and compress data and connect over the network to it's twin that uncompresses at the far end and passes onto IDS. The Stevens volume 1 of Network Programming will have client server examples and it will be trivial to pipe IO through <fill in compression library of your choice> Alternatively you could hack the source of netcat to compress<->decompress Then your client connect to 'localhost' or some other server on the lan and then the wan connection is compressed. I would offer to quote you for the work but that would be bad netiquette! -- Clive Eisen CTO Hildebrand Group