INFO: More About the Automation and Connection Managers

ID: Q157429

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Visual FoxPro for Windows, versions 5.0, 6.0

SUMMARY

This article contains information about the Automation Manager and the Connection Manager, such as the purpose of the Automation Manager, how to properly register it, and how the Connection Manager handles client access privileges.

MORE INFORMATION

The Automation Manager runs in the background and basically does nothing more than act as the process for handling remote automation. Specifically, the Automation Manager serves as both an OLE Proxy and OLE Stub to process and marshal remote procedural calls (RPCs). You are not able to create a remote server object without having it running.

If you plan on making OLE Callbacks, then you need to have it running on the client as well. If the Automation Manager is properly registered, then it is automatically started when an OLE Callback is invoked (that is, an object reference from the client is passed to the remote server).

If the Automation Manager does not automatically launch with an OLE Callback, then it may not be registered properly. The Visual FoxPro installation process does this automatically, but if the registry somehow becomes corrupt, you can do this yourself from Visual FoxPro as follows:

RUN /n c:\vfp\autmgr32.exe /regserver

Automation Manager registry settings are stored in the following location:


   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Automation Manager

The Remote Automation Connection Manager (RacMan) is a component that ships with Visual FoxPro and handles the following:

Remote connectivity on the client side--the client can change a server that is already registered locally to being registered remotely.
Client access on the server side--the server can determine access for clients either at machine level or at automation server level. With NT, Access Control List (ACL) security policies can be enforced.

Registry settings for remote servers are stored with the specific server itself in the CLSID key in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT.

REFERENCES

For more information about OLE Automation in Visual FoxPro, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q157049 HOWTO: Debug Remote Automation Servers

Q156014 HOWTO: Set Up OLE Automation in Visual FoxPro

Q155939 HOWTO: Use Clireg32.exe for Remote Automation

Q155934 INFO: General Information About the OLE Automation Manager & Racman

Additional query words:

Keywords : kbinterop kbAutomation kbVFp500 kbVFp600
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Platform :
Issue type : kbinfo