Software Vault: The Diamond Collection

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Text File | 1995-02-22 | 26KB | 673 lines

(This is only a portion of the documentation which is included in the BBS distribution disk. See ORDER.DOC to obtain the full manual.) Database For Users, Terminals and Groups INTRODUCTION XDB is a database program that provides a contiguous interface through which the page server is maintained. In this regard, maintenance refers to the adding, modifying and deleting of pager data items. There are four types of pager data items which consist of users, terminal, groups and settings. In addition to database maintenance, there is an option under the Misc pulldown that allows pages to be sent in stand-alone mode. XDB was written because someone must be in charge of maintaining both the INI file and the LST file. If you are not into menu driven programs such as this one, you have the option of not using this at all. As a replacement, you can use any text editor and a text file sort program to maintain these two files. You can decide which one better suits your requirements. Also, see QSTART.DOC for rapid start information. XDB - The Interface XDB can be run from the DOS line by entering XDB. It will require about 180K of free memory. If your machine has less than this, refer to the manual method of editing the INI files. Assuming you have plenty of memory, the opening screen of XDB will look like this: ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Users Terminals Groups Settings Other Misc Quit │ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ You can use the left-right arrow keys or press the letter key that corresponds to the capital letter in each menu option. As you may recall from the previous section on editing the INI file, there are four sections which you maintain. These four are the first four in the above menu. Pressing <enter> (or hitting the hot key) on any one will produce a drop-down menu. Users To add/modify or delete a user, select the Users item. A drop-down will appear that looks like this: Users ╔════════════╗ ║ Add/update ║ ║ Delete ║ ╚════════════╝ Here again, use the arrow keys or press the hot key corresponding to the capital letter. ┌───────────────────┐ │ENTER ID: KASE │ └───────────────────┘ Either of the selections will produce a box like the above into which you are to type the name of the record to retrieve or add. The ID is the first field in the user record. As you will recall, a user record in the INI file looks like this: KASE,AIRTOUCH,5551212,Kasey Kasemodel,PROCESS REDESIGN 555-1234 The ID is the first field. If you are creating a new record, enter the name of the ID that you wish to use. XDB will protect you from creating duplicate recods by retrieving the record if it already exists. Also, XDB will match on the first position 1 match. In other words, if you have a user called KASERDOO, a search for KAS will produce the KASEDOO record. (Unless of course, a KASERDEE is encountered first.) The fields will be entered into a dialog box that looks something like this: ┌──────────────────── User Entry ─────────────────────┐ │ # 1 ID KASE Full Name Kasey Kasemodel │ │ │ │ Terminal AIRTOUCH Pager # 5551212 │ │ │ │ Company PROCESS REDESIGN Other 555-1234 │ └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Look back to the section on Users for a description on what each field is for. When finished entering the data, press the ESC key. If the record has been changed, another box will appear asking for permission to write the data to the disk. ┌────────────────────┐ │ Save this? │ │ Y/N? Y │ └────────────────────┘ Press Y or N to indicate you disposition on this matter. Should someone in the organization decide to persue greener pastures, the delete option may come into play. Same thing here. Enter the ID of the person -- keeping in mind that partial matches are acceptable. If the ID is located, a box will appear asking for your permission to remove the record: ┌─── !DELETE! ───┐ │ ID: BILLYBOB │ │ Please confirm │ │ Y │ └────────────────┘ Y will wipe him, N to cancel. Terminals Terminals are handled the same way as users. Only difference is the dialog box used to collect the data. ┌────── Terminal Entry ───────┐ │ Terminal ID AIRTOUCH │ │ Primary (800) 564-7079 │ │ Secondary (800) 564-7079 │ │ Baud 1200 Parity Even │ │ Data 7 Stop 1 Wide 8 │ │ Max Chars 230 1 │ └─────────────────────────────┘ Page down to the end of this file to see what each field is for. Something to note here is that you will not be able to enter a 1 in front of the 800 number. This is intentional. See the next section Settings for the answer to this one. FYI: You cannot delete an active terminal. An active termnial is one that has a user assigned to it. If you did that, the user would be un-pageable because the communication program would have no way of knowing who to call to send the page. Trying to delete an active terminal will produce a harsh scolding-type message. Consider yourself warned. S e t t i n g s --------------- The settings box contains most of the information that is contained in the first part of the INI file. ┌────────────────────────────── Settings ───────────────────────────────┐ │COM 3 Dial prefix Setup ATE0 S7=255 S11=55 S0=0 │ │Page server signature [hi!] Logfile name RAP.LOG │ │Do you want to log errors? N Codes to log? 5 Debug feature? Y│ │Seconds to wait for a CONNECT? 30 Times to redial the host? 3│ │Rename PAGs to ERR if they don't send? N Show scripts at runtime? N│ │Autosplit large pages? N Squeal like scaled cat on abends? Y│ │Name of the dump file for session summaries RAPDUMP.CSV │ │Include the message in dumps? Y Delete PAGs if they send OK? Y │ │Include a sequence number on all pages? Y │ │Title for the status box TERMINAL STATUS WINDOW │ │RX_color 9 TX_color14 XY 25,5,77,24 BAttr124 NAttr112 Border3 │ └───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ There is an additional field called DIAL PREFIX. This is used to prepend the telephone number. For example, most lines require a 1 before the 800 to reach the paging host. If this is the case, then the only entry here would be 1. What if, however, your PBX requires a 9, then a delay, then a 1. The PREFIX would be 9~1. The ~ symbol is used because a 9,1 would be written to the INI file causing the communication program to think the 9 and 1 are in separate fields. (Because the INI is comma delimited.) For details on everything else here, see the explanations given in the previous section on the INI contents. Groups The pull-down for the groups is slightly different. It will contain one extra item called Maintain. Here's how it will look: Groups ╔════════════╗ ║ Add ║ ║ Maintain ║ ║ Delete ║ ╚════════════╝ Here's how it works. To build a group, you must first Add one. To add a group, you select Add. This will produce a box with which you are already familiar. Enter type in the name of the group and press <enter>. Suppose we are creating that SUPPORT group: ┌───────────────────┐ │ENTER ID: X_SUP │ └───────────────────┘ The first time you create a group, you will see this message: ┌─────────── ESC to continue ────────────┐ │ Cound not find the GROUPS.UTG file. │ └────────────────────────────────────────┘ Do not freak out. This is normal. All is well. By popping the ESC key, another dialog box will appear: ┌───────────────────────────────────┐ ┌─│ GROUP ID X_SUP 0 │─┐ │ │ DESCRIPTION The X Project │ │ └─│ QUANTITY 0 │─┘ └───────────────────────────────────┘ The name (ID) of the group will entered. Your job will be to complete the record. The description should be a few characters to describe what this group is intended for. Usually that's a department name or a group name that associates the members with some other thing or function. In a development role, this might be the name of the application where the members are the ones responsible for maintaining it. The QUANTITY field tells you how many people are currently in the group. The 0 in the upper right corner tells you how many groups you currently have in the database. Once the description is entered, hit the ESC key to save the data. Ok, now you have a group to which you should assign members. Move the menu item to Maintain. Groups ╔════════════╗ ║ Add ║ ║ Maintain ║ <-- that one ║ Delete ║ ╚════════════╝ A list of all users will be displayed in a box which you control via the up-down arrow keys. These names are being read from your user file which you should have already created via the Users item in the main menu. If you have not created any users yet, then you're not going to be able to build any groups. ┌───────────────────────────────┐ │ ANDERSOP-Peter Anderson │ │ ANDRAKOS-Sarah Andrakomime │ │ ARGY-Yami Argmogile │ │ ASHEWB-Bill Ashew │ │ CHENL-Larry Chen │ │ CRONERD-Don Croner │ │ DARWICHM-Mary Darwich │ │ DAVISD-Dick Davis │ │ HADLEYH-Harry Hadley │ │ KASE-Kasey Kasemodel │ └───────────────────────────────┘ Use the arrow keys to find the user you want in that group. When the menu bar is on top of the user name, press the <space bar> once. This will put a check mark to the left of the name indicating your selection. Do this as many times as you want people in the group. When finished, press <enter>. To cancel, press <esc>. If, after the group has been created, you need to add or delete a member, you will be required to rebuild the entire group. For an existing group, all members will be displayed on the left side of the screen. Select the ones that are supposed to be in the group and press <enter> to resave them. Remember, this group feature should not be used to maintain very large groups of people. See Tip #1 for large pager groups. Deleting a group works just like deleting a user or a terminal. Try it and see if you don't believe it. C h e c k i n g O u t T h e V i e w ----------------------------------------- The view option is what you use to see your data all-at-once. For example, after you have entered all of your users, you may want to verify that everything is correct before putting the data on-line. In this case, slide over the view menu and select Users. View ╔════════════╗ ║ Users ║ <- yup, that one ║ Terminals ║ ║ Groups ║ ║ RAP.Ini ║ ║ RAP.Lst ║ ║ Rebuild ║ ║ About ║ ╚════════════╝ XDB will build a viewable list of the users (because they are normally stored in a binary file) and then load the list into a viewer program called RDFILE.COM to display it. Once you have finished viewing the data, press <esc> to continue or <f1> to do other things. This means that RDFILE.COM must be either in the default sub-directory or somewhere on your PATH when you select this option. Rebuilding The Rebuild is kind of like the DoIt! option in some Borland's Paradox. You can make all sorts of changes here but the page server and or paging utilities will not be affected until you rebuild the INI and LST files. Making changes to users, terminals and groups will make changes to the UTG files. This is where the data is stored in the binary format. The communication program, however, does not use these. So when you add a name via the Users option, it goes into the USERS.UTG file first. Only after you Rebuild does it get written into the INI and LST files. When maintaining the page server, it is general ok to modify these files while the page server is running. There is a really really slight chance you could have a file collision during the rewrites but it happens so rapidly the chance is pretty darn slim. If you are running a critical paging system, best bet is to always test your work after making any change! A rebuild from the View option will rebuild immediately with no confirmation. The RAP.INI will be renamed to RAP.OLD so you will have one level of backout. If you rebuild twice, then your backout is gone. If you exit XDB without a rebuild and if changes were made, the following box should appear: ┌────────────────────┐ │ Rebuild files? │ │ Y/N? Y │ └────────────────────┘ Remember, you must rebuild if you want the most recent changes to be made available to the communication end and to users. WHAT THE RAP.INI FILE IS ALL ABOUT INI Settings COM=x x must be 1..4. There is no way to set the address or interrupt. If you are using some hybrid, you may be out of luck. Best bet is to get a standard machine. (That's going to be cheaper than asking the developer to make a custom version for you.) SETUP Whatever 40 characters your modem likes each time you go to dial the paging host. SIGNATURE The close is a string that is appended to each page. On page servers, sometimes it is used to identify which page server sent the message. LOGFILE Name where the communication program should make note of what happens. If you do not specify a drive and sub-directory, it will be written to the default. LOGLEVEL All events/alerts are coded from 1 to 7 where 1 is a fatal abend (perhaps so bad it will not even be able to write to the log file!) and 7 is debug/dump mode. Once the system is on-line, it is recommended to run at 3 or 4. The lower the number, the smaller the log file. If the local hard drive is small, use a 1. DEBUG Y/N When set to use, RAP will operate in the verbose mode showing you details about what settings are being used and when certain routines are being called. Genearlly, leave this set to N unless you are into screen clutter. CTIMEOUT Connect timeout is the number of seconds the communication program will wait for a carrier. Timer starts when dialing begins. If your PBX takes a while to get out, this might need to be increased. Setting this too high is not a problem but will slow down performance when the paging host is busy or does not answer. (Hey, it happens.) CHARPACE This is the amount of delay (in milliseconds) between the transmission of each character. Default is 20. Some paging companies are sensitive to over-pacing. Drop it to 10 or even 5 -- but keep an eye on the reliability. You may get more checksum errors or garbled pages when pacing is to fast. (The lower the value, the faster the pace) CTENACITY 2..5 This is the number of times RAP will attempt to connect to a host before giving up. Each try consists of two attempts: one to a primary number, the other to a secondary. Therefore, a setting of 2 will make a maximum of 4 calls. RENAME_ERR Y/N Sometimes RAP will not be able to send a page. The reason for a page not being sent varies, but line noise and the wrong phone number are the two leading causes of pagus interuptus. If a page does not get sent, RAP will rename the PAG to ERR so you can resubmit the PAG at a later time. SHOW_SCR Y/N When building and testing a new script for a host, set this to Y so you can see all aspects of the communication session. Once pages are streaming out the door, set this back to N to keep the screen clutter down. MULTIPAG Y/N RAP is able to break oversized pages into ones that fit neatly into the receiving host. For example, if a host limits message size to 230 characters, and a 500 character PAG is sent, RAP will split the origainal message into two messages, each being under the 230 character limit. If this is set to N, and an oversize page is encountered, it will be trancated to the host never receives too many characters. ALARM_ON Y/N If you want RAP to beep when it has problems, set this to Y. DUMPFILE RAPDUMP.CSV The dumpfile is a comma delimited data file that contains a summary of all pages sent. This is intended to allow you to produce end-of month summaries showing traffic volume to hosts and users. See the section of this manual on reporting for more information about how to generate those reports. DUMPMESG Y/N The dumpmesg parameter determines if a portion of the message is written to the dumpfile. If this is set to Y, then the 1st 70 chars of each message is written to the dumpfile. This might be handy if the system is being used to track the delivery of important information. When a PAG has been sent successfully, there is usually no reason to keep it around. This option, if set to Y, will cause RAP to delete the PAG if no problems were encountered. Otherwise, the PAG remains in the default sub-directory, unless of course, rename_err is set to Y. SEQPAGS Y/N Each time a page is sent, a sequence number can be included to let the user know which page they are receiving. For example, when this is set to Y, the first page a person receives will being with <1>. The second will be <2> and so on. If the next one they receive is <4> it means one was not received. In this case, they would call into the office to find out what they missed. The sequence numbers are maintained in a file called USER.DTA. Unless this file is deleted, sequence numbers will continue to grow for each user. (up to 65,000 at least) It is recommended that this file be erased each morning at one minute at midnite so that each day begins with "This is page <1> for today" for each user. To have KBAT restart this each day, include the following line in your KBAT.CFG file: @1201,del_user.bat,Restarts the user file The del_user.bat file should contain: vud >>user.txt del user.dta The VUD utility will dump (append) the contents of user.dta to a file before it is deleted. This way, you can review the previous day's activity should there be an interest. TITLE Whatever A bordered window appears when RAP runs. This is the title of that window. Probably something like ACTIVE STATUS would be appropriate. RX_COLOR 0..15 Each time something is received, it will be displayed on the screen. This determines the color of each string received from the modem. To keep snoopers out, set this value to the same color as the background of the window. (NATTR) This will effectively make all modem receipts invisible. TX_COLOR 0..15 Each time something is transmitted, it will be displayed on the screen. This determines the color of each string sent to from the modem. To keep snoopers out, set this value to the same color as the background of the window. (NATTR) This will effectively make all modem sends invisible. WINDOW 25,5,77,24 This is the size of the status window that RAP uses to show you what it is currently doing. The above example is a normally sized window that works well for more installations. The values are column, row of the upper left and column, row of the lower right. BATTR 0..127 The is the attribute of the border for the status window. Run RGB to get a handle on what the different values mean. Usually this matches the NATTR - but you can decide what looks best. NATTR 0..127 The is the attribute of the inside of the status window. Run RGB to get a handle on what the different values mean. BORDER 1..6 This is the type of border used by the status window. 1 is a single line, 2 is a double. Not really a very important parameter. TERMINALS ----------------- The terminals begin after the [TERM] heading. A terminal is a paging company, their phone number and a few modem settings. In the above INI example, the terminal line looked like this: AIRTOUCH,8005647079,8005647079,1200,E71, 230, 8 There are seven fields in each terminal record. Here's what each does: Field Number Description ------------------------------------------------------------- 1 Name of the paging company (no spaces) 2 Primary telephone number 3 Backup telephone number 4 Data speed 5 Parity, data and stop bits 6 Max.message size 7 PIN width Nothing much to say here except: No Extra Commas Please! ----------------------- Commas delimit the fields, so please do not put any commas in the fields! If you need to use a comma to indicate a delay in the dial string. e.g., 9,18005551212 use a ~ instead. The communication program (RAP) will convert it at dial-time. Attack Dialing -------------- The two phone numbers should not be the same, although they can be. Most paging companies offer an 800 termimal number but also have a local access number as well. If the 800 service goes down, so is your page server. It's a good idea to use the first number as an 800, the second as the local. That way you're good and covered. If the communication program cannot connect on the first number, it will try the second. For details on any of the other items, contact your paging company. GROUPS ----------- The groups begin after the [GROUPS] heading. It ends with [ENDGROUPS]. A group is a collection of users. For example, if you have 4 people in technical support that all need to be notified of something once in a while, you could create a group call SUPPORT. SUPPORT, Fred, Barney, Wilma, Betty If you sent a page to SUPPORT, four pages would actually be sent. X_SUPPORT, BillyBob This way, when BillyBob hits the highway, you need only change the person assigned to the X_SUPPORT group. Also, should BillyBob start to slack, you could easily add his boss to the group so she knew when his apps where blowin up. X_SUPPORT, BillyBob, BettyLou USERS --------- The users begin after the [USERS] heading. Here is what a user record will look like: KASE,AIRTOUCH,5551212,Kasey Kasemodel,PROCESS REDESIGN 555-1234 User records have five fields. They are: Field Number Description ------------------------------------------------------------- 1 User name 2 Paging company (must match sometime in [TERM]) 3 Pager number or PIN 4 Full name 5 Company or department User Name - The user name should not contain any spaces. Ideally, this name matches whatever they use on the network. If there are any duplicates in the INI file, the last one will be used. The communication program does not check for dups! If you are editing the INI file with an editor, it is your job to ensure lack of duposity. Paging Company - Must match something entered in the [TERM] section. If not, then the page will not be sent. Once again, this is your job to ensure. If you enter a typo here, that user will not be getting many pages from your system. Pager Number/PIN - Some paging companies use a 7 digit number, others assign a 4, 5 of 6 digit PIN. This field should contain whichever is appropriate. The current system will left-fill the string with zeros to pad to a size of 8. If your paging host does not accept this, please drop a note to the developer. Full Name - This is used by the paging utilities (the ones the users will be running to send pages) to display who's who. For example, if you use a coded user name, the full name may be necessary to decode the user. Company/Dept - Same thing as the full name. If your paging list is large, you may have multiple departments and vendors. By placing a name here, you make the selection process a bit easier for the users. If you list is small, you can skip this. That's all there is to the INI file. Once you have entered everything with the editor, save the file. Now the other part of the manual side is maintaining the LST file. The LST File ------------ The LST file is the list of names the paging utilities will use to display who is available. Here is what a LST file looks like: ROMANSM.........Mike Romans (Ford) SAEKIT..........Tommy Saeki (AAI) SAMMY..........Sam Catorini (AB) SCORLEJ........John Scorles (ACME) SILVESTJ......Joe Silvestri (AAI) This too is a text file. The left side contains the user name, the right side is full name and company/department. When looking for a name, the page programs will display this list from which the user may select the appropriate recipient. To make the manual process a bit less manual, use the utility called MAKELST.EXE to read the freshly edited RAP.INI and to create a new version of the RAP.LST. If you are picky, you can then apply a sort to the file to get them in a logical order for picking. (Unless of course you have them sequenced in some other logical fashion within the INI file. (i.e., alphabetical, by department) So that's it for the manual side. Simple yes? If you choose to not use XDB, it is recommended that the edit process be placed into a batch file. This way, the LST task is always taken care of after making changes to the INI.