PRO/5 Data Server as a Visual PRO/5 Print Server

The Standalone PRO/5 Data Server, which has been deprecated since 2019 and is now superseded by the BBj P5 DS Server that ships with BBj, also provided server-side printing functionality for Visual PRO/5 clients through the provision of printer aliases in a PRO/5 Data Server config.bbx file.

The BBj P5 DS Server does not utilize a config.bbx file and doesn’t provide for the configuration of printer aliases to support server-side printing for Visual PRO/5 fat-client deployments.

Therefore if server-side printing remains a requirement for Visual PRO/5 clients in a BBx (hybrid Visual PRO/5 and BBj) deployment, the Standalone PRO/5 Data Server can be retained to serve only as a print server.

Here are some key configuration requirements:

• Naturally the Standalone PRO/5 Data Server must run on a different port from the BBj P5 DS Server.
• The PRO/5 Data Server’s config.bbx will still contain the Visual PRO/5 printer aliases and must NOT include a PREFIX statement. This helps to prevent Visual PRO/5 clients from inadvertently finding and opening a file via the deprecated PRO/5 Data Server.

Here is a sample VPRO/5 printer alias containing the PRO/5 Data Server reference to a remote Standalone PRO/5 Print Server, running on port 1100:

ALIAS L01 /<servername,port=1100>”|lp -dprinter_name -o nb -o raw -s “printer_name” CR,SPCOLS=255,WAIT=30

Conclusion:

The primary objective of deploying a hybrid Visual PRO/5 + BBj P5 DS Server environment is to take advantage of the multiplicity of powerful BASIS DBMS features that follow when BBjServices is in control of file operations. If the remote ‘print server’ functionality of the Standalone PRO/5 Data Server is still required, it can be retained to serve only that function. Taking a little time to limit the scope of the deprecated Standalone PRO/5 Data Server to only printing by removing PREFIX lines in the PRO/5 Data Server config.bbx will help avoid file access collisions between the two data servers.

Last Modified: 8/26/2022 Product: VPRO/5 Operating System: Windows platforms