[Quickfix-developers] Socket Monitoring/Verification

[Jim W. <wi...@wi...>]

 Folks,

   I am working on a QuickFIX App that connects to a counterparty
where the connection is not very reliable.  Checking the logs, I see on
average half a dozen to ten re-logins each market day.  I want to be a
lot more proactive about tracking the status of the connection, and if
possible, when it is time to send out an application message, check to
see that the connection is good before even attempting to send it.  I've
put a try {} around my sendToTarget calls and attempted to catch
exceptions related to the socket, but none get thrown.  Even when I
am testing and deliberately break the network connection, I still get
no exception thrown.

   Does anyone have a decent rundown on what facilities are there in
QuickFIX to monitor the status of the socket at a low level?  Are there
any flags or fields on the Session that I can check?  Should I force a
Test message before attempting to send Orders, etc.?  I don't want to
hack QuickFIX itself if I can avoid it.

   I'm currently using QuickFIX 1.10.2 but intend to upgrade to 1.12.4
this weekend.  Can I expect any major gotchas during the upgrade?

many thanks,
Jim Wiggs