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eRACEm Version 1.00 A RemoteAccess User/Answer File Pack/Sort Utility Copyright 1991, 1993 Michael F. Janke. All Rights Reserved. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Disclaimer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Licensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Using eRACEm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Packing the user base . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 PACK Switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 -P . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 -D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 -M . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 -G . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 -K . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 -L . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 -O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 -C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Packing the answer file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Answer file pack switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 -A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 -R . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 -Z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 eRACEm PACK examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Sorting the user file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Sorting on Primary and Secondary keys . . . . . . . . . 6 Allowable sort fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Ascending and Descending sort . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Using eRACEm's sort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Sort command line switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Sort parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 eRACEm version 1.00 User Documentation CHAPTER 1 - Introduction eRACEm is a companion program to the popular RACE, RemoteAccess Caller Editor. eRACEm has replaced the built-in user base packing and sorting previously contained in RACE and has had numerous improvements and additions. eRACEm is designed for, and must only be used with, the new RA 2.0 user files. eRACEm will NOT work with, and could damage, user files created by RemoteAccess v1.11 and below. eRACEm attempts to verify that the user files are RA 2.0 user files, but this test is not guaranteed. 1. Disclaimer eRACEm is supplied as is. If you use eRACEm, you accept any damage or loss that may occur with your user files. If you cannot accept this condition, DO NOT use this program. I made every effort to insure eRACEm is safe to use. It has been used on numerous systems for extended periods of time, but things can and do go wrong. The best insurance is a current backup. eRACEm makes no attempt to share the user files with any other task. If you attempt to pack or sort the user files while RA is active, you are asking for trouble. 2. Features * Purge users based on number of calls, user age, security level, group and days since last call. * Sort users in ascending or descending order on any one or combination of 16 different fields. * Pack an answer file of answer sets marked deleted within the RACE validation routines, answers from users that no longer exist in the user base and duplicate answers. (Answer file maintenance is a registered only feature) 1 eRACEm version 1.00 User Documentation CHAPTER 2 - Licensing eRACEm is considered part of the RACE package and as such, falls under the guidelines of the licensing agreement contained within RACE.DOC. RACE and eRACEm are shareware and require a $15 (U.S. funds) registration fee. This fee applies whether you just want to use eRACEm, RACE or both. A registration form has been provided in the RACE distribution package. 2 eRACEm version 1.00 User Documentation CHAPTER 3 - Using eRACEm 3. Configuration eRACEm is entirely command line driven and requires almost no configuring. eRACEm does get path information from RACE.CFG so you will need to run RACECFG.EXE and edit the file path information to coincide with your particular setup. If you haven't done so already, run RACECFG.EXE and move the highlight to the main menu FILES option. Hit <ENTER> to pull down this menu, move the highlight bar down to SYSTEM FILENAMES and hit <ENTER> again. Once in the SYSTEM FILENAMES menu, you can enter the information necessary to fit your system. "System path" is the drive and directory containing RA. "Users.bbs" is the full path AND filename of the user file. It is not necessary to define "Answerfile" if you are only using eRACEm with this RACE.CFG. 4. Packing the user base Packing the user base only requires supplying a few command line switches to eRACEm. Any number of pack switches may be used in combination. All switches must be preceded by a hyphen or slash character and each switch must be separated by at least one space from other switches. In other words, "eRACEm -d60 -m10" is the same as "eRACEm /d60 /m10" and either method or combination of both may be used. Stacking of switches, i.e. "eRACEm -d60m10" is NOT permitted. a. PACK Switches Switches are listed below in no particular order. Also, each switch is surrounded by the "<>" characters for clarity only. DO NOT use these characters on the command line. <-P> The <P> switch is used only when you wish to purge the user file of users that have the deleted flag set. There is no need to use this if you are using other switches because RACE will always purge users that are marked deleted in that case. 3 eRACEm version 1.00 User Documentation <-Dn> The <D> switch requires a second parameter (n) that defines the number of days between the current date and the last date the user called before the user will be checked further to see if any other command line parameters have been met. The <D> switch is a required switch and all other switches, with the exception of the <P> switch, will do nothing if a days parameter is not provided. One drawback to this requirement is that eRACEm will not delete users with a last call date less than one day ago unless the user is marked deleted. <-Mn> This switch defines the <M>aximum security level that will be affected by the current pack. This is slightly different than RA's RAUSER utility which will only purge users BELOW the <M> parameter. In other words, using -M10 would allow eRACEm to purge users with a security of 10 or below while RAUSER would only purge users with a security of 9 or below. <-Gn> Purge users in <G>roup n. <-K> If this switch is supplied on the command line, the user NO-KILL flag is ignored and it will not protect the user if all other parameters are met. <-L{filename}> The <L> switch writes a log file containing information on which users were deleted. If a plain <L> is used, the log file is RACEPACK.LOG You may supply a filename so that eRACEm will write to a file of your choosing. For example, "-Lmylog.dat" will create a file called MYLOG.DAT in the current directory. NO check is made and if a file by that name already exists, eRACEm will append the log information to that file. <-O> This switch tells eRACEm to write/append to two files in the user directory. These files are called USERS.OLD and USERSXI.OLD. These files will contain the full user record of each deleted user. With this feature, you can go into RACE and use the Whoops! feature to restore a user that was purged from your user base. Be advised that each user consumes just over 1K of disk space. If you use this command line switch every day and delete a lot of users, these .OLD files could grow quite large. Neither eRACEm or RACE maintain these files in any other way that just described. 4 eRACEm version 1.00 User Documentation <-Bn> purge users below n years old. <-Cn> Purge users that have called n times or less. This could be used to purge users that call one time and never come back. 5. Packing the answer file eRACEm has the capability of packing a RA generated questionnaire answer file if two criteria are met. First, you must be a registered user of RACE/eRACEm. Second, you must be using the validation feature of RACE v2.00. Validation creates an index into the answer file that eRACEm needs. a. Answer file pack switches <-Afile> The <A> switch must have the BASE (no extension) filename of the answer file appended to the switch. In other words, "eRACEm -Anewuser" will pack the Newuser.Asw file. You may pack any answer file as long as an index file has been created by RACE. The <A> switch removes answer sets that you have marked deleted within the validation feature of RACE. The <A> switch =MUST= be used if you wish to use either or both of the following switches. <-R> The <R> switch allows eRACEm to go through the answer file and remove answer sets from users that no longer exist in USERS.BBS. The <R> switch takes no parameters. <-Z> This switch <Z>aps duplicate answers. The logic used here is quite simple. eRACEm looks through the answer file finding all answer sets from a user. It then deletes all but the last answer set. eRACEm has no idea whether or not the other answer sets are actually exact duplicates. The <Z> switch takes no parameters. 6. eRACEm PACK examples a. To purge users that have not called in 60 days and have a security level of 20 or below: eRACEm -d60 -m20 5 eRACEm version 1.00 User Documentation b. Purge users that have not called in 45 days and have a security level of 20 or below and who are less than 18 years of age and purge even if the user meeting the above criteria has the NO-KILL flag set: eRACEm -d45 -m20 -b18 -K c. Purge users that have not called in 45 days and have a security level below 20. Also purge answer file records in NEWUSER.ASW for users that no longer exist in users bbs and remove answer file records that were marked deleted in RACE: eRACEm -d45 -m20 -Anewuser -R 7. Sorting the user file The sort provided by eRACEm works a bit differently than both the sort provided in RACE v1.52 and that provided by RA's RAUSER program. The end result is certainly the same, but the options and usage of eRACEm is quite different. One feature worthy of mention is that eRACEm never, ever sorts the first record (record 0, usually the Sysop's record) out of position no matter what sort criteria you use. eRACEm will make use of EMS (if available) or the hard drive for temporary storage if the user file is so large that it cannot be sorted entirely in memory. With the new, expanded RA 2.0 user fields, it is not likely that any but the smallest user base will be sorted in RAM. Like RACE v1.52, eRACEm will allow you to sort on a number of fields. The main difference is that eRACEm will allow you to sort on multiple fields and each individual field may be sorted in either ascending or descending order. 8. Sorting on Primary and Secondary keys (fields) If you've never used a database or other program that allowed sorting on multiple fields, it's important that you understand how the sort provided by eRACEm works so that you don't think something is wrong when the end result is not what you expected. A sort is first performed on the primary sort key. Only if two (or more) primary sort fields are EXACTLY identical will eRACEm 6 eRACEm version 1.00 User Documentation sort those fields on the secondary key. In other words, if you select the user name as the primary key, it is unlikely eRACEm will sort any users by the secondary key because it is doubtful that you have two users with identical names. On the other hand, if you select the security field as the primary sort key, you will no doubt have many users with identical security levels and the sort will then sort the secondary key within each security level. 9. Allowable sort fields eRACEm can sort on any one (or combination) of the following user fields. Fields are listed in no particular order. Name, City, Credit, Posts, Security, Calls, Ups, Downs, UpK, DownK, Group, Pending, LastCall, FirstCall, SubDate, BirthDate. These are the EXACT identifiers you must use for the sort parameters. I won't bore you with a description of each field as their names are fairly self-explanatory. 10. Ascending and Descending sort eRACEm requires you to select whether you would like an ascending or descending sort. This is selectable by field so that you may select an ascending sort on one key and a descending sort on another key. An ascending sort on a text field (name, city, etc.) means the records will be sorted from lowest (the letter "a") to the highest (the letter "z"). On a numeric field such as the security field, this would start at 0 and go up to your highest level. A descending sort is naturally just the opposite. 11. Using eRACEm's sort a. Sort command line switch eRACEm has one simple switch that signals sort parameters to follow. This is the -S switch. As with packing, you may use /S or -S. b. Sort parameters 7 eRACEm version 1.00 User Documentation The -S switch must be followed by one or more sort key names mentioned in paragraph 9, Allowable sort fields. It is important to note that IF and only IF you use more than one sort key, the sort key names MUST be enclosed by double or single quotes or square brackets. Also, each sort key name MUST be terminated with a plus or minus character ("+", "-") to signify whether it is to be sorted in ascending or descending order. The first sort key name provided in the parameter list is considered the primary key. An example will clarify the above requirements. If you just want to sort on the users last name in ascending alphabetical (a - z) order you would use: eRACEm -Sname+ Or to sort on security level only, with the highest levels first and lowest last you would use: eRACEm -Ssecurity- If you wanted a sort like the one provided by RAUSER, i.e. highest to lowest security level with each individual security level sorted by name in ascending order you would use: eRACEm -S"security- name+" or eRACEm -S[security- name+] or eRACEm -S'security- name+' Note that: eRACEm -S[name+ security-] would not produce the results you might expect since, as mentioned earlier, it is not likely you would have two users with the exact same name and therefore, the sort on security would never occur. <EOF> 8