Using Workstation on a Windows System

The following sections describe additional information about using the BEA Tuxedo ATMI Workstation component on a Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 system:

Benefits of Using Workstation on a Windows System

The Windows instantiation of the Workstation client offers significant benefits to application developers:

Executable text is shared among applications, saving memory.
BEA Tuxedo Workstation upgrades are possible without relinking or modifying an application program's executable file.
Dynamic linking permits interpretive graphical application generator tools (such as Visual Basic, ObjectVision and SQLWindows) to call BEA Tuxedo system services.

Software Prerequisites

The software prerequisites for running the Workstation component on a Windows system are as follows:

Workstation for Windows runs under the Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 operating system.
In Windows, the native TCP/IP stack is used.
In Windows, while using TCP/IP, any Windows Sockets Compliant TCP/IP stack can be used.
The server machine must have the BEA Tuxedo system and the native-side BEA Tuxedo Workstation installed.

Writing Client Programs

You can develop client programs targeted for Windows workstations in the same way that you would develop native client programs within the BEA Tuxedo system administrative domain. All the ATMI functions are available.

Interoperability Restrictions for Workstation Clients

Interoperability between BEA Tuxedo release 7.1 and later Workstation clients and applications based on pre-7.1 releases of the BEA Tuxedo system is supported in any of the following situations:

The client is neither multithreaded nor multicontexted.
The client is multicontexted.
The client is multithreaded and each thread is in a different context.

A BEA Tuxedo release 7.1 or later Workstation client with multiple threads in a single context cannot interoperate with a pre-7.1 release of the BEA Tuxedo system.

Building Client Programs

To compile client programs written in C, you can use any compiler that can read Microsoft C import libraries. To compile COBOL source programs that call the ATMI, use the LITLINK option of the COBOL compiler. For details, see COBOL Language Bindings for the Workstation Component" in Programming a BEA Tuxedo ATMI Application Using COBOL.

You can also build BEA Tuxedo clients without using the buildclient(1) utility. If you are using Microsoft Visual C++ projects, use the following settings:

Set the Preprocessor option to -DWIN32.
Add WTUXWS32.LIB MSVCRT.LIB to the input libraries for the linker option.

In addition, set the INCLUDE, LIB, and PATH search directories appropriately.

Building GUI ATMI Clients

The sample/atmi/ws directory contains several different windows platform .mak files for creating GUI atmi clients. For an example of how these files may be used, see Tutorial for bankapp, a Full C Application in Tutorials for Developing BEA Tuxedo ATMI Applications.

Run Time

Limitations

The BEA Tuxedo libraries (DLLs) prior to BEA Tuxedo release 7.1 are not thread-safe. For applications written using the pre-release 7.1 DLLs, threads should not be used; otherwise, threaded access is serialized through all BEA Tuxedo calls (such as ATMI, FML, userlog(), and so on).

Using the BEA Tuxedo ATMI Workstation Component