IN-HANDLE attribute

A persistent procedure you just started up dynamically (by invoking an external procedure with the PERSISTENT attribute set to TRUE)

A running persistent procedure containing an internal procedure or user-defined function you want to invoke dynamically

An object whose attributes you want to get or set dynamically, or whose methods you want to run dynamically

Syntax
IN-HANDLE [ = { `handle-expression` \| `char-expression` } ]

handle-expression

A HANDLE expression. Table 84 explains what the handle can indicate and who it is set by.

Table 84: What IN-HANDLE indicates and who sets it
If the handle indicates . . .	It is set by . . .
A persistent procedure you just started up dynamically	The INVOKE( ) method
An already-running persistent procedure containing logic (in the form of internal procedures and user-defined functions) you want to invoke dynamically	You
An object whose attributes you want to get or set dynamically	You

A CHARACTER expression indicating the name of a system object, such as "SESSION" or "FILE-INFO".

When you use IN-HANDLE to call an internal procedure, IN-HANDLE affects INVOKE( ) the same way the IN proc-handle phrase affects the RUN statement. Similarly, when you use IN-HANDLE to call a user-defined function, it affects INVOKE( ) the same way the IN proc-handle phrase affects the DYNAMIC-FUNCTION function. In both cases, IN-HANDLE specifies the instance of the external procedure that contains the internal procedure or user-defined function.

When IN-HANDLE is used to get or set an attribute or to invoke a method, it represents a handle to the object to which the attribute applies. If the attribute applies to a system object such as the SESSION handle or the FILE-INFO handle, IN-HANDLE can be set to a character string such as "SESSION" or "FILE-INFO" that indicates the name of the system object.

Note: When you create a running persistent procedure by running an external procedure persistently, you can do this statically or dynamically. Similarly, you can run any of the persistent procedure’s internal procedures and user-defined functions statically or dynamically.

For information on dynamically invoking logic that resides on an AppServer, see the reference entry for SERVER attribute.