Conference azur::mcc

    We've read Jim LEMMON's answer ( 729.1 ) to Philippe's question .
    It's an answer to some of our question as well.
    
    We have still no idea about how to sort these informations : for
    instance , in order to get the list of all entities installed in a
    particular building , we thought about running a command procedure doing 
    
    	DAP> show class mcc
    
    then selecting all subclass and performing
    
    	FCL> show subclass * with location = building X 
    
    while forwarding output in a file .
    
    Problem is that show subclass * with location = ... is not supported 
    according to SSB release notes and that show subclass .... commands
    works only if entities are reachable .
    
    There are surely better ways to to that ? Thanks for any other solution
    .
    ch. 
       

    Manuel MORALES from Valbonne european center suggested me another
    solution :
    
    Why not exporting reference attributes for each entity ( one time ) ?
    
    This should create MCC_NODE4 , MCC_SNMP , MCC_UB RDB tables that you
    could futher use to select all the entities installed in a particular 
    building for example .
    
    question is : has somebody tried to export customized reference
    attributes ?
    Thanks for any input .
    
    ch.
    

  Re: .2
    
>    question is : has somebody tried to export customized reference
>    attributes ?
 
    Exporter FM exports all attributes defined in the data dictionary
    for a given entity.

   Sam   
    

>    In relation to the configuration management they are asking 2
>    questions :
    
>    1) How to define the configuration of the net even if the entities are
>    unreachable or not yet connected to the net . 
>    ( I believe that unfortunately we cannot register an entity without
>    talking to it in the current release of DECmcc . I fear that they will 
>    not put up with ... ) 

You are correct, for v1.1 and earlier MCC can not register
an entity unless it is able to communicate with it.  Implementing 
the ability to register unreachable entities is being consider 
for v1.2.
    
>    2) How to register the informations about the different entities :
>    assume they want to manage such informations like :
    
>    	- vendor
>    	- building
>    	- floor
>    	- room
>    	- manager's name
>    	- manager's telephone 
>    	- network board
>    	- date of last breakdown
>    	- comment 
>    	- ......
    
MCC supports 7 reference attributes for the entities on the
DIR/BMS kits.  They are implementation description, location, mail 
account, phone number, remarks, responsible person, text file.
These reference attributes can be SET and SHOWn through either
the FCL or iconic map PMs.  

>    How and where to store these informations ?

Reference attribute data is stored in DNS.

>    ( I believe we can store some informations with FCL commands in DNS (
>    in partition references ) but this needs a MSL modifications . Is such
>    a modifications possible for a node4 entity , an SNMP entity , .... ? )
>    Is it possible to define as many as needed customized informations for 
>    different entities ?

The 7 predefined reference attributes can be set and shown as soon
as the entity is registered.  You can add customized reference attributes 
to any entity class by writing MSL code, compiling that code, augmenting 
your dictionary and rebuilding the parse tables.  From then on MCC would 
treat your customized reference attributes the same as it treats the 
predefined reference attributes.

>    Next step is of course to sort these informations ( by building , by
>    vendor , .... ) and to generate graphical outputs . 
>    ( Programming interface to DNS doesn't seem to be documented )

You can access this data via set,show or export.

    thanks for all these informations we couldn't test ourself because we
    have lent our EMA station to our customer !
    
    ch.