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CometLib Comet 2004 brings to fruition several years of work. CFAM has been running in at least two servers every day for almost three years. The file system we call CFAM (Comet File Access Method) benefits the Comet Community in several important ways. CFAM runs in each Client Computer. It communicates to its server partner CNS (Comet Net Serve) using TCP/IP. The Client computer never needs to log into the server or use the Microsoft file system. On the server, CNS is closely coupled to CFileServ (Comet File Server for Windows).which performs all file services required by all users. For local file access, each client computer also has a copy of CFileServ which is coupled to CFAM directly. There is no extra charge for this local file access. As you can see, we have essentially split the file system from the heart of comet itself, and made it into its own executable program. Comet becomes a “client” of this server arrangement. We have created an API – a library of methods embodied in a COM container that exposes the file system interface used by comet, so that programs written in other languages can access Comet Files. These programs are just other clients for CFAM. This document introduces that API. Examples will be written in Visual Basic, although programs written in any language capable of attaching to a COM Server can use the API. Comet must be running on the same computer as the client program for the CFAM API to function. For file security, CFAM restricts access to files designated as type C in the SYSGEN Comet.ini file. Thus, the complete file security for a particular user can be governed by the NODENAME.CFG file generated by SYSGEN. The new Comet install program introduced with version 2004 automatically registers CometLib with Windows as a COM server. The API is contained in the file cometlib.dll which is placed in your windows system32 folder by the workstation install procedure. PLEASE NOTE: The implementation of this API is new. Signature Systems reserves the right to add delete and change the details of CometLib until the Comet 2004 beta period has passed. This may result in programming changes on your part. Here is a step-by-step example of using cometlib in a visual basic program. Currently there are 2 versions of visual basic in favor, VB 6.0 and VB.NET. Select the appropriate link below for the version of Visual Basic you are using. Keep in mind that CometLib can be used by ANY program or language capable of interfacing to a COM library. |