MetaEdit+ 5.5 documentation updates

MetaEdit+ 5.5 includes HTML manuals, and as we make updates, additions or other formats of the manuals available we will provide them here.

The FAQ and Forums are also useful sources of information.

Efficient SOAP scaling with persistent connections

MetaEdit+ SOAP API server will use persistent connections if the client program allows. Some client SOAP libraries do not enable persistent connections by default, and then each SOAP call will open and close its own connection. As each connection has a Timer to enable timeout after 20 minutes, an API client program that uses non-persistent connections and makes over around 15,000 calls can start to run out of Timer resources, and run slowly.

To use persistent connections, see your SOAP client library documentation. The result will be visible in the HTTP exchanges in the log in the API Tool, as HTTP/1.1 without "Connection: close", or HTTP/1.0 with "Connection: keep-alive". E.g. in gSOAP, you can set this in the initialization with the SOAP_IO_KEEPALIVE flag:

soap_init1(&soap, SOAP_IO_KEEPALIVE);

With this change, an API program that previously took 42 minutes ran in 2½ minutes.