FTAM/9000 Programmer's Guide

Chapter 2 63

Using HP FTAM/9000

General Recommendations

Observe the following recommendations for programming with FTAM:

• FTAM functions are not re-entrant. Do not call any FTAM function

within a signal handler.

• The inout_dcb pointer should reference a NULL value on input. This

way, you do not have to anticipate the necessary output memory; the

FTAM interface will allocate it for you. (Remember to later free the

memory using ft_dfdcb().)

• You are guaranteed a minimum of 10 local to local (i.e., loopback)

connections. You might have a maximum of 50 local to local

connections, depending on the packet sizes.

• To make troubleshooting easier, always check for errors and record

the following information:

• Loop counters and other program-state information.

• Speciﬁc function call that failed

• Input parameters passed to the function

• Function return value

• inout_dcb->result.return_code

• inout_dcb->result.vendor_code

• Log instance (upper 16 bits of vendor_code)

• inout_dcb->diagnostic.error_id

• inout_dcb->diagnostic.further_details

• return_string and vendor_string (from ft_gperror() or em_

gperror())