Microsoft KB Archive/191624

= INFO: Do Visual FoxPro Datasources Work Under MTS? =

Article ID: 191624

Article Last Modified on 8/12/1999

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Visual FoxPro 6.0 Professional Edition

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This article was previously published under Q191624



SUMMARY
One of the great new features of Visual FoxPro 6.0 is improved support for Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) Server. However, there are some issues to be aware of when using Visual FoxPro data within MTS.



MORE INFORMATION
Microsoft Transaction Server is a critical technology for creating distributed applications that scale to Enterprise requirements. Part of the MTS appeal is its automatic transaction support. Distributed components can all participate in transactions which are Atomic in nature and retain their transaction state across multiple component calls. With MTS 2.0, transactions are limited primarily to actions taken against databases such as record inserts, deletes and updates.

In order to support MTS transactions, a datasource must utilize the Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator. Databases, such as SQL Server and Oracle, support transaction protocols that permit them to work with a design-time control (DTC). SQL Server supports OLE Transactions while Oracle uses XA Transaction support. This allows one component to perform an action against one of these databases and have another one abort it so that its actions are automatically rolled back.

Unfortunately, Visual FoxPro databases do not support either of the transaction protocols needed to work with MTS distributed transactions. While this limits the use of Visual FoxPro data in MTS transactions, there are still plenty of valuable uses for Visual FoxPro data such as meta data. In addition, many applications do not necessarily require strict distributed transaction support. Fortunately, there are many solutions around this problem. You might consider using the MTS Shared Property Manager to set a property that your Visual FoxPro server can check throughout the lifetime of the transaction and perform its own rollback/commit.

NOTE: Visual FoxPro's own native transactions still work, but since they do not go through the Microsoft DTC, they do not participate in the distributed ones managed by MTS.

