AS/400 Connections

[Guest.Visitor]

I have had a number of years experience of this problem and have found only three ways of 'solving' it. 1. The expensive way - buy Datamirror or similar product to give 2 way comms between 400s and SQL servers. 2. The very inexpensive but not as reliable way - use FTP rather than ODBC and get a job to run on the 400s to pick the information up. 3. Use a VB application (running on the SQL server) that can make use of full ODBC commands to check for AS400 availability. Hope this helps Paul

[Guest.Visitor]

I'm a SQL Server developer attempting to run an SQL job which exports data to various AS/400s across the world. Unfortunately the availability of these AS/400s cannot always be guaranteed. The problem I have is that my SQL job uses IBM client access to connect to the AS/400s and if it cannot successfully sign on because the AS/400 is offline it just hangs indefinitely. I'm looking for some way of determining whether the AS/400 is available or not before attempting to sign on. I've tried using cwbping, but as this does not 'exit' on failing to get a response, the end result is the same. Is there a command I can execute which will return a response I can handle? Many thanks in advance.

[Guest.Visitor]

Thanks for your help Paul. I had looked at the ftp option, but was trying to find something a little more foolproof. At least now I can stop looking. Many thanks Clare