Aumerial.Data.Nti 5.0.0

NTi Data Provider

NTi Data Provider is a lightweight, fully managed, multiplatform access provider for IBM i servers. It lets any .NET application query the DB2 for i database, call programs and execute CL commands over the native host servers, with no ODBC driver, no IBM i Access installation and no unmanaged dependency.

Version 5 is a complete rewrite of the NTi 4 provider: same API, same connection strings, a new engine underneath. Applications running on NTi 4 upgrade without code changes.

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2026 - AUMERIAL SAS

Why version 5

The whole transport and protocol layer has been redeveloped and optimized end to end: large reads saturate a gigabit link from a single connection, unitary latency is the lowest of the drivers we benchmark against (ODBC, JT400), the read path decodes values with near zero allocations, and the engine is truly asynchronous from OpenAsync to DisposeAsync.

NTi has no external dependency. Character conversion (179 CCSIDs: EBCDIC single byte, double byte and mixed SO/SI, Unicode, ASCII/OEM) is powered by NTi's own conversion tables, extracted from an IBM i server and cross checked against JTOpen and ICU, with no reliance on System.Text.Encoding.CodePages.

Getting started

using Aumerial.Data.Nti;

using var connection = new NTiConnection("server=MYIBMI;user=MYUSER;password=MYPASSWORD");
connection.Open();

// SQL
using var command = connection.CreateCommand();
command.CommandText = "SELECT ORDNO, CUSNAME, AMOUNT FROM MYLIB.ORDERS WHERE AMOUNT > ?";
var amount = command.CreateParameter();
amount.Value = 1000m;
command.Parameters.Add(amount);
using var reader = command.ExecuteReader();
while (reader.Read())
    Console.WriteLine($"{reader.GetString(0)} {reader.GetString(1)} {reader.GetDecimal(2)}");

// CL command
connection.ExecuteClCommand("SNDMSG MSG('Hello from .NET') TOUSR(QSYSOPR)");

// Program call
var parameters = new List<NTiProgramParameter>
{
    new("CUSTOMER01", 10),          // CHAR(10)
    new(0, ParameterDirection.Output), // BINARY(4)
};
connection.CallProgram("MYLIB", "MYPGM", parameters);

Entity Framework Core support is available through the companion Aumerial.EntityFrameworkCore packages.

Supported platforms

• .NET Framework 4.7.2+
• .NET Standard 2.1
• .NET 5, .NET 8, .NET 10
• IBM i V5R4 and later (V7R4+ recommended; GetSchema catalog collections require a recent OS)

AI agent skill

The package ships a skill file for AI coding agents (agents/SKILL.md in the package): connection string reference, ADO.NET and EF Core patterns, program and service program calls, and IBM i specific pitfalls. Install it into your repository with:

dotnet msbuild -t:NTiInstallAgentSkills

Run it from the folder of a project that references the package, after a package restore (any build does one). The command is opt-in and copies the file to .claude/skills/nti-ibmi-provider/SKILL.md; run it again after a package update to refresh the skill.

Migrating from NTi 4

Version 5 keeps the NTi 4 API and connection string keywords. The differences below are deliberate; each has a documented remedy.

• UDT mappings (NTiUDTMapping, SetUDTMappings) are removed.
• The inert [Obsolete] properties UseDefaultPorts, RetreiveSuccessMessages, IgnoreNonQueryResult and PreFetch are removed.
• untrusted now defaults to false: TLS server certificates are validated unless you opt out with untrusted=true.
• The blocking factor is adaptive by default; set blocking factor=1000 to restore the fixed v4 sizing.
• AdditionalFactorCallback is obsolete: use AdditionalFactorProvider, which receives the authentication context (host, user).
• Main classes are sealed, and NTiException derives from DbException (existing catch (NTiException) code keeps working).
• Misused savepoints and double Open now throw instead of silently doing nothing; invalid connection string values throw at assignment.
• ConnectionString hides the password once the connection is open, unless persist security info=true.
• Precision and Scale on NTiParameter follow the standard byte based DbParameter contract.
• A program parameter built with an explicit ccsid no longer changes the process wide default encoding of other parameters.

Release notes

5.0.0
Complete rewrite of the NTi 4 provider: same public API and connection string keywords, new protocol, conversion and pooling engine (see Why version 5 above). New in 5.0: fully asynchronous engine (real async I/O from OpenAsync to DisposeAsync, cancellation-aware at every phase), default ccsid keyword, async MFA callback with authentication context, ExecuteClCommandAsync/CallProgramAsync, service program procedure calls (CallServiceProgram/CallServiceProgramAsync), fetch ahead keyword, adaptive blocking factor, sovereign CCSID conversion tables.