Sockets are software communication end-points that allow one process to communicate with another on the same machine or across a network. ABL implementation supports TCP/IP sockets in ABL that allow one ABL application to establish a connection with another ABL or non-ABL application, and thus to communicate with that application on the same machine or across a network.

ABL socket implementation also includes support for Transport Layer Security (TLS) connections. This support includes attributes for specifying the TLS configuration for an ABL client or ABL server TLS session and utilities for managing key and certificate stores for OpenEdge TLS clients and servers. For more information on TLS and OpenEdge TLS support, see Introduction to Security and Auditing.

Note: TLS incurs heavy performance penalties, depending on the client, server, and network resources and load.