Tips: Optical programming

The following techniques are often helpful in designing custom optical programs for your business.

This topic describes how the optical file system manages file data so application programmers can optimize their applications. Since applications have different requirements, this topic does not suggest the best way to write an optical application. It does, however, provide explanations that all application programmers could find useful.

Use this topic to determine the best way to handle optical file management, either through the HFS or UNIX-type APIs. Use this topic only for applications to directly attached optical support.

• Media capacity and volume threshold
  Read about indicating a volume threshold for your applications.
• Managing media capacity on a per-file basis
  Learn how to manage media capacity on a per-file basis.
• Expanding buffer I/O through HFS
  Read about tailoring read requests for performance and to expand buffer I/O in HFS.
• Using forced buffered data APIs
  Read about using the QHFFRCSF or fscync() APIs to write optical file data to nonvolatile media while writing to optical media.
• Held optical files
  Read about how to manage virtual files that are held due to an error while writing to optical media.
• Path names
  This topic describes path names for optical volumes.
• Examples: Moving spooled files to and from optical storage
  This topic includes some basic optical programming examples using i5/OS™ control language (CL) commands.