The General Communication Facility (GCF) manages communication among all components of Vector. GCF has five elements:

The Name Server keeps track of all DBMS, Data Access, Communications, Bridge, and Enterprise Access servers in an installation and provides user processes with the information they require to connect to local or remote installations.

The Name Server provides information to user processes that enables a connection to a local DBMS Server. When a process wants to connect to a remote DBMS Server:

The Name Server Maintenance Utility (iinamu) is a part of the General Communication Facility provided by Vector. This utility allows the system administrator to manually add servers to or delete servers from the list maintained by the Name Server, or to stop and restart the Name Server.

For more information about this utility, see the Command Reference.

The Communications Server (iigcc) is a daemon process that provides the network communication element of the Ingres Net product. It monitors outgoing communication from local applications to remote DBMS Servers and incoming communication from remote applications to local DBMS Servers. An installation can have multiple Communications Server processes.

For more information on the Communications Server, see the Connectivity Guide.

The Data Access Server enables communication between Java applets and applications and Vector. The Data Access Server is the server component of the JDBC Driver, and also provides DBMS Server access for the Actian .NET Data Provider. Data Access Server parameters include the maximum number of inbound sessions, client connections, connection pooling, pooling timeouts, network port, listen address, and protocol status. Configuration of the Data Access Server is done at installation and rarely requires reconfiguration.

The Bridge extension enables communication between Vector clients on one network and servers on a different type of network. Reconfiguration of the Bridge Server is rarely required.

For information on the Bridge Server’s role in Vector connectivity, see the Connectivity Guide.

The General Communications Architecture (GCA) is the lowest level General Communications Facility Application Program Interface. The GCA maintains communication connections between processes on the same local Vector installation. The GCA is a subroutine library that is a part of all Vector tools, DBMS Servers, and the libraries associated with embedded SQL.