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1994-07-16
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MOnitor Message Areas
abbreviated MOMA
User's Guide
----------------------------------
version 1.00
July 16, 1994
----------------
i) Introduction
----------------
Modern electronic bulletin boards typically have many message areas,
sometimes thousands of them, and the sysop cannot hope to track which of
them get used. MOMA is a tool for monitoring message areas, generating a
report of how many users access each message area.
MOMA reads Maximus's lastread pointer files (*.sql or lastread.), compares
them with copies saved from the previous run, and reports how many lastread
pointers have changed. Generally, the lastread pointer only changes when a
user reads messages, so MOMAs report gives the sysop a metric on which
areas are getting read, and which aren't.
RESTRICTION:
This product is the copyrighted work of David V. Keeney. It may be freely
distributed by any means, as long as it is represented as unrestricted-
distribution. (You may charge a reasonable fee for it's distribution, but
you may not charge for the right to use it.)
DISCLAIMER:
I am not liable for any harm resulting from the use of this product. I do
_believe_ it to be safe and reliable.
David Keeney
1111 10th St #175
Alamogordo, NM 88310
Fido 1:308/230
The MAD Board
(505) 437-4077
The command line for MOMA is:
MOMA <area.dat> <report.rpt>
<area.dat> is the name and path of the Maximus Area.dat file.
<report.rpt> is the name and path of the ascii report. MOMA uses the
report to store cumulative access counts, so the report is read if it
exists, and then rewritten. It is an ascii document, readably by you, and
useable as an online bulletin, if desired. If you wish to reformat the
report for display, make and edit a copy, rather than the original.
I recommend that you run MOMA daily, in your nightly event. At any time, the
report will have a cumulative measure of area usage.
The FIRST time you run MOMA, it will report 0 accesses for every area,
because it has no saved pointer data. Subsequent runs will count message
area accesses since the previous execution of MOMA.
There are some utilities that change the lastread pointers without a
corresponding reading of messages.
The utilities I am aware of that change lr pointers, are the Prefix/Postfix
pair, and SqFix. If you use these utilities, you should run MOMA
beforehand and then, after running the respective utility, copy the lastread
pointer file to a filename with extension .MLR. That is, copy the name.SQL
file to name.MLR. The next time MOMA is run, it will pickup only the
changes made since the .MLR file creation/overwriting.
If you have any complaints, please let me know, and I'll try to correct the
program. If you have ideas for new utilities, let me know, and I may
implement them.
Enjoy.
Dave