Version: 17.0.41.0 - Generally Available (for production environments)
Release date: 2024-08-02
See our product requirements page for DataGate for IBM i requirements on the IBM i.
If you are using terminal emulation with either ASNA Wings or ASNA Browser Terminal, please be sure to update your DataGate clients to 16.0.x.0 (Wings 10.0.x.0 or WebPak 16.0.x.0) or newer on both your development and deployment machines before installing this new DataGate for IBM i server.
Non-interactive connections (i.e. those not using the terminal emulator) done with older DataGate Clients will work, but any attempt to start a connection with 5250 emulation will require the client to be running at least version 14.0.0.0.
DataGate for IBM i instructions.
Links to DataGate-focused articles at ASNA.com.
Starting with the version 15.0 of the ASNA family of .NET products two changes were introduced to some ASNA DLLs. If you are upgrading to 15.x or higher from a previous release ASNA family release the following may apply to you.
The first change is that ASNA.VisualRPG.Runtime.DLL expands into three new DLLS: * ASNA.Runtime.DLL * ASNA.Runtime.Support.DLL * ASNA.Runtime.Monarch.DLL
This increased granularity was made to better match library improvements and DLL changes to the various ASNA products that use them. The details of this three-way split are shown below in Figure 1.
In Figure 1 above the namespaces each DLL provides are shown prefixed with {}. They are:
You can see that although ASNA.VisualRPG.Runtime.dll has been split into three DLLs the same namespaces are provided in the new DLLs. The version 15.x DLLs also provided a few new additional namespaces beyond what’s shown in Figure 1.
To maintain backwards compatibility of version 15.0 with previous versions we ship an
ASNA.VisualRPG.Runtime.dlllibrary which forwards requests for any of the four original namespaces that where in that DLL to the corresponding new DLL. We will stop shipping theASNA.VisualRPG.Runtime.dllwith the next major version of ASNA .NET products. This forwarding version of this DLL will be available as a separate download.
The second change is that ASNA.VisualRPG.Common.Sgml.dll
has been deprecated and its code has been moved to
ASNA.Runtime.dll. This change mostly affects customers
using Mobile RPG and Wings.
There are no coding changes you need to make in your projects because of these changes. The only changes you need to make is adding and/or deleting references. For new 15.x projects the correct project references will already exist.
ASNA.VisualRPG.Common.Sgml.dllIn addition to removing that reference:
ASNA.VisualRPG.Runtime.dllASNA.Runtime.dllASNA.VisualRPG.Runtime.dllASNA.Runtime.dllASNA.Runtime.JobSupport.dllASNA.VisualRPG.Runtime.dllASNA.Runtime.dllASNA.Runtime.JobSupport.dllASNA.Runtime.Monarch.dllThe ASNA.Runtime.* DLLS are located at:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\ASNA Shared\Client\xxwhere xx is the ASNA Visual RPG version number.
For more details on the runtime changes click here.
Please see this asna.com article for ASNA’s browser and mobile client support.
DataGate 17 features secure database name storage using Windows
DPAPI.ASNA has always recommended using *PUBLIC database
names for websites. In v17, we further recommend always using the
*Public prefix explicitly when referencing database names
in website applications, including Monarch. Otherwise, applications may
encounter run-time exceptions that include phrases such as “user profile
not loaded” when Windows DPAPI is used in IIS sessions running with
anonymous or impersonated credentials.
For example, an AVR-based website might have code similar to the following, which references a DG database name in a DCLDB statement as follows:
DclDB Name(MyDatabase) DBName("IBMSERVER") Access(*Public)We strongly recommend changing this statement as shown below:
DclDB Name(MyDatabase) DBName("*Public/IBMSERVER") Access(*Public)If changing existing code is impractical, the only way to avoid errors is to ensure that the configuration of the IIS application pool in which the website runs includes the setting “Load User Profile = True”.
Note that this setting may reduce the performance of large-scale website applications.
Configuring IIS is Windows- and version-dependent, but generally follows this set of steps:
Websites may produce “user profile not loaded” exceptions mentioned in the release Notes, even when database names are referenced with the recommended “*Public/” prefix. If so, you must configure the “Load User Profile = True” IIS Application Pool setting (also mentioned in the Release Notes) as a workaround. It is highly recommended to remove this workaround when you install the release of DataGate.
The DataGate client software contained in this release significantly changes the way Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connections are configured. DataGate SSL support was introduced in Version 15 as an option for secure network communications between DataGate clients and servers.
In prior releases, DataGate client connection configurations, by default, specified an SSL-enabled connection. This allowed many users to enhance the security of their applications by simply installing the new, SSL supporting DataGate release. Unfortunately, other customers experienced connection and security issues due to shifting standards and evolving platform infrastructure supporting SSL, as offered by Windows and IBM i.
In this release, DataGate client users must now “opt-in” when configuring new connections secured with SSL. When a new connection configuration is created, the default setting is to specify a non-SSL, or “clear-text” connection to the server.
DataGate connections are typically configured as “database names”. A database name is a collection of properties defining all the information needed to connect to a DataGate server from the client computer. Existing database names are not affected by this change, but new database names are affected:
Database names created by prior releases retain the same SSL configuration as they had when created or modified.
The default configuration of new database names will specify non-SSL connections.
Online documentation linked below fully details the process of creating an SSL-enabled database name configuration using DataGate Studio. The process is very similar for users of DataGate Monitor.
Read more about DataGate’s SSL support
DataGate offers many options for enhancing the security of its client/server connection with SSL. For full details of options available for both the client and server, please consult the online documentation.
Connection configurations are represented in DataGate as instances of the SourceProfile class in the DataGate .NET API. While most users and applications will configure connections via database names, some programs use the DataGate API directly.
Users of the SourceProfile class are advised that the changes in this release may represent a breaking change to the behavior of your programs. The default value of the SourceProfile.SslOptions property is now SslOptions.None; in previous releases the default value was SslOptions.Request. If your program does not explicitly set this property, connections made with the SourceProfile instances you create will be clear-text, rather than SSL-enabled.
If you directly create and use SourceProfile instances in your programs, ASNA highly recommends modifying them to explicitly set SourceProfile.SslOptions before deploying this DataGate release.
Database names created by DataGate releases prior to Version 15 do not contain SSL-related configuration information. When these database names are read by Version 15 software, the configuration is migrated to include SSL configuration options. Prior to this release, those migrations would enable SSL connections, unless otherwise explicitly changed by the user. Henceforth, automatic database name migrations will disable SSL in the connections they represent.
Users who deploy applications using the database names contained in configuration files created with prior, non-SSL supported DataGate releases are advised that changes in this release may represent a breaking change in this deployment strategy, for reasons outlined in the previous paragraph.
If this software is downloaded via Edge you may receive a message stating that this file “is not commonly downloaded” when attempting to install it. In this event click the View Downloads button, select the ASNA product to install from that list, and confirm that you’d like to install it.
Similarly, attempting to install the software directly through
Microsoft Windows may cause a “Windows protected your PC” message to
appear. In this event click the small More Info prompt on
the left, and click Run Anyway on the following window.
DataGate for IBM i installs the following Open Access handlers:
Each handler is licensed separately. Talk to your ASNA sales representative for licensing details.