Imagine Transparency

The Imagine Transparency facility allows Model 204 programs to access files stored in the Imagine database as if they were local files. This facility is available in Model 204 Version 8.0 and later.

While a fair amount of setup is required to define and populate the Imagine files being accessed in Transparency mode, and create Imagine broker processes to provide Model 204 access to the Imagine files, very little setup is required on Model 204.

First, an IMAGINET port must be defined in an Online that would be using Transparency Mode. The number of connections required is the maximum number of threads simultaneously accessing Imagine files in the Online. The total number of threads in the Online is, of course, an upper bound for this number.

Then, each Model 204 file hosted on Imagine needs to be allocated as an Imagine file. For example:

ALLOCATE SOMEFILE WITH IMAGINE

Once this is done, any reference to SOMEFILE in aModel 204 application (including in file groups) would access the data from Imagine via the IMAGINET port. Note that a single Model 204 file can corresponding to many Imagine files if record types are used.