OrganiZATOR User's Guide

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Maintenance of Work Areas



As indicated in the introduction, Zator is an application designed for the management and organization of information based on a distributed database system. Each of these dBases makes up a work area. The application has three zones, and each of them can be connected at a given time with a different area (dBase). In addition, exist the possibility of easily jump from one area to another, which in the end means changing the dBase with which you work.

The exchange area mechanism, which sometimes is also called connection change, is based on a table of work areas containing the title (alias) of the area and the direction (path) of the directory where the file of the dBase is. The first works as a logical direction, while the second is the physical address of the resource. Each of this dBases can contain one of these tables.

Figure 1

 

Figure 2

Maintaining the table of connections/work areas can be performed by selecting Configuration >> Work areas from the menu bar of the initial window, which leads to a window similar to that shown in Figure 1. But remember that to access this option requires Super User or Operator System privileges. Initially this table may be empty if it has not been previously defined any area apart of the local area settled initially by the application.


Note that the involved maintaining operations relates to the dBase of the area connected at that time in the initial zone (main zone), so that to maintain the table of connections of the local area, previously must be connected with that area. Precisely to avoid confusion, the caption of the maintenance window, displays the name of the area on which it operates. In the case of the example in the Figure, is being edited the table of an area whose nickname is Develop Pavilion (LAN); we assume that correspond to a database sited somewhere in our LAN.

Note: immediately after started the application, the work area connected is just the local area, so it's not necessary to take any action in this regard if you want precisely to edit the table of areas of your default dBase (yours local area).


The maintenance process is fairly easy and intuitive; the columns contain the titles (nicknames) with which we identify the different work areas (dBases), while the Paths contain the addresses of the respective directories.

Although the process of maintaining that we are commenting can operate on the table in any area, the mechanism to actually change of work area (Connect area ) always uses the table of addresses of the local area, which means that the addresses contained in the Path column, will be interpreted from the perspective of an application in the same directory as the file. This makes it possible that can be used absolute (net-addresses) who begins with the identification of the node [2], or relative, who begins with an indication of the volume (C:, D:, E:, etc.) In this last case, the directions are interpreted as belonging to the local node.

We assumed that the addresses that refer to areas located in different nodes must use an absolute address, while in principle, the ones who refers to the node could use addresses of any kind [1]. For example, if the node in the example shown on the figure 1 (the address of the area Develop Pavilion (LAN)) is in the machine SERVER2, the address of the area called Backup develop Local (three lines under the cursor) can be expressed as D:\Z\Zator5\Backup or \\SERVER2\D\Z\Zator5\Backup.

Note: in some tests, we noticed that for areas situated on the same node is preferred to use relative addresses, and that the use of absolute addresses is a major penalty on the performance of the mechanism of access to the dBase. We think that this is because the use of network addresses, involves the use of an additional layer of network software by the OS, which happens even to addresses in the same node. This layer, who behaves much slower that when the directions refer unequivocally to the own node, would be responsible for the degradation.


In addition to the options in the menu bar (Quit and Create new), by right clicking on the list, provides a contextual menu with the option to modify or delete the item selected.

The above options may also be accessed by from the keyboard:

  • [Insert]  -> Create new work area
  • [Del]  ->  Delete the item selected at the time by the cursor.
  • [Alt]+[M]  -> Modify the area selected by the cursor.


The options for the creation and modification leads to a window like in Figure 2. The button [Examine] provides a browser window in which you can select any directory as path for the area in question.

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[1]  Here we assume that the node itself is the same on that contains the dBase whose table we are editing.

[2]  These addresses use the scheme known as UNC (Universal Naming Convention).