Connectivity problems

Connectivity problems can generally be divided into two categories: initialization errors and lost connections.

By default, all components fire up connections at the very start of AL operation during its initialization phase. If for some reason a connection fails at this point then the 'Prolog – On Connection Error' Hook is invoked, giving you a script container from which to send alerts or even change parameter settings and attempt to connect again. Similarly, if connection errors occur during AL cycling then you use the 'DataFlow – On Connection Lost' Hook to handle this situation.

In addition to this custom handling, Connectors and Function components also provide built-in reconnect functionality via a Connection Errors tab. Here we can instruct the component to attempt to re-establish a lost connection, or in the case of an initialization problem, to continue trying to set up the connection.

In the case of initialization errors, it is not common practice to enable reconnect unless you are experiencing recurring issues like sporadic timeouts during SSL negotiation, or similar sporadic connection problems.

It is however recommended to enable Auto Reconnect on Connection Loss, allowing your component to re-establish its connection and then continue as though nothing had happened. Be aware that in the case of Iterator mode Connectors, reconnecting will also mean that the iteration 'cursor' may also be reset, such that cycling begins again at the first entry in the result set. Of course, for state-aware Iterators, like Change Detection Connectors, this is not a problem since these components automatically use state information to resume where they left off.

Parent topic:

Hardening your Integration Solutions