This session provides practical experience in the process of customization that is required to set-up a working installation of LANDP. During the session you will set up a simple LANDP workgroup consisting of a single workstation running a small number of the available LANDP services.
For this example we will be setting up a workgroup that is composed of a single workstation. This stand-alone workstation will act as a server for the LANDP Shared File Database server (SHFILE), and also as a client of that server. Whilst this example is somewhat simplified, the same principles apply when configuring a large workgroup that is composed of a number of different types of workstations and servers.
The main stages in the process are:
As mentioned in the Introduction, in this session we will be customizing a workgroup that consists of a single machine. Before we can begin the customization process we need to review the LANDP services which we are going to use and determine what steps will be needed. For a large networked workgroup this might be a rather lengthy procedure as we would have to consider a large number of services running on multiple servers and client workstations under different operating systems and environments, possibly with a number of external devices and so on, which may require device drivers or other supporting software.
For this first exercise, the only service will be the SHFILE server. This will be running under Windows NT on a single stand-alone workstation. As such we will not have to concern ourselves with wider network considerations. However, we still need to define the workgroup names and workstation ID as if we were dealing with a larger and more complicated configuration. In our case we will use the workgroup name "LDP1" and the workstation ID "AA".
SHFILE will be configured to use a single database using a simple record structure:
Once the LANDP network planning is complete, the next step is to install the files required for customization on a single workstation, which is referred to as the customization workstation. All the customizations required for the LANDP setup are carried out on this one workstation, and the runtime files generated at the end of the customization process are then distributed from here to all the other workstations. In this session the single workstation acting as the whole workgroup, will also act as the customization workstation.
In most instances this would be done using the product CD-ROM, but it is also possible to perform this installation from diskettes or from a network drive. For this session the required files are already in place on your workstation, in the directory C:\EHC. If you change to this directory and do a directory listing you will see the directory structure described in the previous presentation.
The important directory for this session is the EHCCUS sub-directory. This directory will contain all the information required to customize the LANDP workgroup and is the working directory for the customization process. For each workgroup to be customized a new sub-directory will be created under EHCCUS, and you will see that a number of sample directories already exist. The file LANLIMIT.SPC in this directory contains information that determines which of the workgroup customizations are processed by using INCLUDE and OMIT statements. You can view this file now by entering
type LANLIMIT.SPC
at a command prompt. As you can see the only restrictions on processing are to omit all the sample workgroup configurations.
Now that the LANDP directory structure and all the required files are in place we can begin the customization process itself. This consists of four main stages, as laid out in the presentation:
The last pair may occur several times over as an iterative process. If, for example, the customization data contains errors then it will not be validated and will have to be re-edited and then pass through the validation process one more time.
These stages are all carried out using a number of utility programs provided by the LANDP installation. For all of these utilities online information is provided by typing the command name followed by a question mark. For example, typing:
You may wish to repeat this exercise with the other utilities mentioned in the following sections, before actually using them.
Many of the LANDP server programs need common data to be defined in order to be customized correctly. The LANDP Installation and Customization book contains a reference table, Server Requirements, which can be used to discover if any of the servers you wish to install require common data.
The SHFILE server, which we are customizing in this session does require some common data so we will now run the utility CREATE which generates default common data for a number of the LANDP servers.
Type
and you should see a number of messages and get heavy disk activity on your workstation. After some time, the program will exit with a number of messages which tell you about the status of the customization. For example:
A return code of 0 means that there were no errors or warnings of any kind. A higher number indicates messages of increasing severity. The common data definitions generated are now stored in the internal repository, as indicated by the third message above. The internal repository is where all the customization data is held, however, in order to edit this data and insert our own customization details we must proceed to the next step and generate the editable files.
This is achieved by using the GENSPEC command. Type :
and again you will see a number of messages, finishing rather more quickly with results similar to those from CREATE in the previous section. This command has now taken the information stored in the internal repository and generated a file called COMMON.SPC which is in the EHCCUS directory. This file can be edited using any plain text editor available on your customization workstation.
To edit the customization data, a utility - EDITSPC - is provided. This file will edit an existing .SPC file or create a new file (and path if necessary) and then open it, if the file specified does not exist. The default editor will depend upon the operating system used, but in any case the default can be changed to your favoured editor if required.
Typing
RECDEF | NAME=LDPREC01, DELIMIT='/', DECSEP=',' |
RECFIELD   | NAME=NAMES, LENGTH=20, FORMAT=C |
RECFIELD | NAME=NUMBP, LENGTH=12, FORMAT=C |
RECFIELD | NAME=BALS, LENGTH=12, FORMAT=P, DECIMALS=0 |
Insert these vector definitions into the COMMON.SPC
file and then save the changes.
The vectors to define the database profile are shown below. The majority of the definition is the SHFLDBD vector which describes the database properties including its filename and location and the keys used to index the data. The SHFLDBD vectors define the program control blocks used to actually access the database.
SHFLDBD  | SHFLPRF=LDPDATA, DBDNAME=LDPDBD, RECNAME=LDPREC01, COLLKEYS=N, DBDPATH=C:\LDPSHFL\, DBFLNAME=LDPDATA, KEY01=(NAMES,S,N), KEY02=(NUMBP,P,N), KEY03=(BALS,S,N) SHFLPCB PCBNAME=ACCNAME, KEYFIELD=NAMES SHFLPCB PCBNAME=ACCNUMB, KEYFIELD=NUMBP SHFLPCB PCBNAME=BALANCE, KEYFIELD=BALS |
Again, insert this information into the COMMON.SPC file and save the changes. Now that we have inserted all the necessary common data necessary for SHFILE we can exit the editor and proceed to the validation stage.
The validation procedure, VALSPEC, reads edited .SPC files and checks the data for consistency. If the data is valid it then generates data to update the internal repository to the same level as the .SPC files. After typing
you will see similar messages to those of the previous utilities. If all the changes you made are correct then VALSPEC will exit with a zero return code after updating the internal repository. If warning messages or errors exist then the internal repository will not be updated and the COMMON.SPC file will have to be checked and re-edited before we can proceed. To assist you in finding the problem you can look at the file CUSPARM.LST, which contains a log of the last customization step that was performed.
To view it type
type cusparm.lst
or open it in any text editor.
Once the common data has been validated we can proceed to the customization of the workgroup itself. If we were customizing a large number of workgroups, servers or workstations we might wish to create model customizations in a file called MODELS.SPC that we could then use as references in each workgroup customization. However, in this session we are dealing with a single workstation so we can ignore this.
To customize our workgroup we need to add LANCONF and LWSCONF vectors to a LANCONF.SPC file. This file does not yet exist, so enter
editspc ldp1 lan
at the command prompt. This should ask you whether you wish to create a new directory, LDP1. Answer "Y" and the directory will be created and editspc will open a new file called LANCONF.SPC for editing. (Remember that LDP1 is to be the name of our workgroup.)
This file should be empty at present, as it has just been created by EDITSPC.
The first thing to add is the LANCONF vector. This vector defines the workgroup name and properties, and whilst it has a number of optional keywords only two are required. These are the NAME and WSNAMES keywords. Enter the following for the LANCONF vector:
LANCONF  NAME=LDP1,
WSNAMES=(AA)
This vector defines our workgroup name and lists the names of all the workstations
in that group, which in this case is only the single workstation called "AA".
We now need to add a LWSCONF vector for each workstation in the group, in this case, one. The vector you enter should be:
LWSCONF  NAME=AA,
TYPE=NT,
SERVER=(SHFILE01),
PAR&SHFL=(LDPDATA),
CLIENT=(SHFILE01,AA)
This vector describes the workstation AA and lists the services it will be running.
In this case it will be running a SHFILE server,
to be called SHFILE01 using the profile LDPDATA
(defined in the COMMON.SPC). The workstation
will also be acting as a client of SHFILE01.
You can now save the changes to the file and exit the editor. You now have to validate the workgroup customization information as you did for the common data. To do this we run VALSPEC again only with some additional parameters to ensure we look at the correct information:
VALSPEC lan \ldp1
This tells the VALSPEC program to validate only workgroup information found in the LDP1 sub-directory. If the information entered is correct then you will again be informed that the internal repository has been updated, and we will be able to proceed to the distribution of the run-time files. If the validation was unsuccessful you can again use the CUSPARM.LST file to trace and correct the mistakes in the LANCONF.SPC file.
The final stage of customization before we are able to start LANDP itself is the distribution of the run-time files. This consists of two steps, the generation of the files using GENRUN, and the actual distribution.
To generate the run time files type
at the command prompt. This will read the internal repository and generate all the run-time files required based on the data we have edited and validated.genrun \ldp1
We can now distribute the run-time files to our workstation. For this example, this process is quite straightforward as we are distributing to the same workstation that we used to customize. In a larger customization process the distribution of files might involve copying files across a network or transfer by diskette.
We wish to place our example LANDP installation in the directory C:\LDP. In order to do this we use the GETTING utility. The command line
getting \ldp1 WS=AA c:\ldp\
will copy the run-time files for the workstation AA to the correct directory. If we had specified A: or B: as the target drive then we would be prompted to insert a formatted diskette. When specifying a target on a fixed disk as we did above then it is important that the path ends with a backslash character as above. You could also leave out the workstation specification and copy all the files for a workgroup.
With this step complete we have now completed the customization process and
can start to use LANDP.
See our brief overview on how to start the LANDP services if you are are not comfortable with the procedure.
To begin using LANDP change to the directory into which we copied the files (C:\LDP). Before we can run the shared file server we must ensure that a log file is open. To open a log file in the current directory type the following two lines
set logpath=c:\ldp
genlog
at the command line. This should generate a new log file ready for us to start using the shared file server. We can now start LANDP by entering
at the command line. This will load the LANDP Supervisor program and any services that we defined during customization. If this is successful then you are now running LANDP. Type
ehcinfo
to see what LANDP services are running.
We now wish to increase the capability of the workstation by adding the Electronic Journal (ELECJO##) and Store-for-Forwarding (SFORFORW) servers. You will need to use the LANDP Installation and Customization (I&C) manual as a reference for some of the information you need to complete the COMMON.SPC and LANCONF.SPC files. Information pertaining to COMMON data is in Appendix C, and LAN configuration information is in Appendix D. For the following exercises, if a KEYWORD value is not mentioned then assume that default value is acceptable and that if it is an optional keyword, it need not be specified.
The first stage is to check the requirements for the SFORFORW and ELECJO## severs. A reference table is given on page 44 of the I&C manual which shows that these two servers both require the presence of the shared file server and the searcher (SFQUERY) servers in the same workstation. Also, they must be clients of SMGR, the system manager server. Therefore, in addition to the SHFILE## information we already have in our two SPC files we need to add further information for four more servers.
The minimum requirements for the vectors specified for each LANDP server are listed in the I&C manual on page 51. As in the case of SHFILE## the main things we need to define are the profiles and record definitions for each server in the COMMON.SPC and the server properties in the LANCONF.SPC. Notice that the SFQUERY only requires vectors in the LANCONF.SPC.
Using the I&C manual as a guide add definitions for the SMGR server to your COMMON.SPC and then validate the file using the VALSPEC command. You will need to add a vector for SMGRPRF which provide the following features:
You will also have to define a SMGRUSER vector with these features:
Once you have successfully validated the COMMON.SPC with the SMGR additions edit it again.
Now define a profile for the Store-for-Forwarding server, using the SFORWPRF profile and the following features:
We also need to define a store-for-forwarding record. Use the SFORWREC vector to point to a record named SFFREC and then using the RECDEF and RECFIELD vectors as we did for the shared-file record earlier, complete the definition for this record as below:
When all this information is in the COMMON.SPC, save the file and validate it, (VALSPEC) to check that you haven't made any mistakes. Remember the output of VALSPEC will appear in the CUSPARM.LST file in the customization directory.
Finally we need to repeat this process for the Electronic Journal Server (ELECJO##). Again, we need to add a profile and a record format to the COMMON.SPC file. Use the following features :
Once again, run VALSPEC after completing your changes to ensure that the common definitions are correctly formatted, using CUSPARM.LST to pinpoint errors if necessary. Once this is done you can do a genrun common and then proceed to edit the LAN configuration data.
The LAN configuration data is the last thing that needs to be changed, as we need to add the SERVER statements for each new server program to the LWSCONF vector. Some of the SERVER keywords will require additional keywords to be defined, to contain paths to data files, for example.
Using the I&C manual add in the required information for the ELECJO##, SFORFORW, SMGR, and SFQUERY servers to your LANCONF.SPC file from the Shared-file server exercise. You will also have to increase the number of sessions available from the SHFILE server because both SFORFORW and SMGR will need a session. To do this set parameter 3 of PAR&SHFL to 3 or more.
For system manager you will need to define some paths, use:
Once the lanconf.spc has been validated successfully you can execute a
genrun lan \ldp1
ommand. This will now have generated all the run-time files required for the workstation. Before distributing these it is a good idea to remove all the old files from the C:\ldp directory we distributed to earlier. Now execute the same getting command as in the SHFILE example and run the commands listed in the Starting LANDP section.
This sample customization process has hopefully given you a good idea of how to set up and run LANDP and are familiar with the major stages:
The later exercises allowed you to use the information in the Installation and Customization manual to build a workstation with three LANDP servers working together.
In the later hands-on sessions you will be using the shared file server in a number of different exercises. It will be using the database structure that you have just constructed, but you will now be able to use an application to access the servers you have customized.