Confirmed-Delivery Conversation
In the next simplest type of conversation, the confirmed-delivery conversation, the client transaction program sends a record and the server confirms its receipt, as summarized in Table 1.
| Client Actions | Server Actions |
|---|---|
| Send one or more records. | |
| Await confirmation. | |
| Receive and process the records. | |
| Confirm the records. | |
| Close. | Close. |
This type of conversation can be used in a credit-authorization system (the client sends an account number and purchase amount, and the server's confirmation authorizes the sale) among its other uses. For example, the client transaction program could send a database record of any kind, and the server could confirm that the database had been updated. Because there is no upper limit on how much data the client can send, this type of conversation could be used to send an entire file of data in batch mode. In this type of conversation the client transaction program receives only the confirmation; it needs no other data returned to it.
The difference between a Confirm operation and a Send is that Confirm transmits only the shortest possible SNA message, the positive response that all data has been received and processed.