Conference azur::mcc

    Sorry , but I ( it doesn't matter ) and some customers (more important)
    don't find Decdecision is a very nice tool .
    
    A very nice tool should be :
    
    	1) in first menu , show all known relationnal databases 
    	   
    	2) select with the mouse that one you want to access
    
    	3) show all known relationnal tables 
    
    	4) select that one you want to open 
    
    	5) select fields you want to work on 
    
    	6) play ....
    
    
    Today , customers who doesn't know anything about VMS & RDB cannot use
    this tool without the help of a DEC person ( may be a good opportunity
    to sell support ) or without the documentation set .
    
    may be Decdecision is only a nice tool ...
    
                    

    re .1
    
    	I'm sorry but if I had a penny for every customer who wanted things
    like DEcdecision to look a bit different (every customer wanting a
    different bit to look different in a different way) then I'd be a rich
    man. There may be ways that the info can be better presented but a hell
    of a lot of "better" ways are based on cultural or (more commonly) PC
    s/w exposure issues.
    
    	DECdecision isn't perfect and could be better but I don't think we
    should start recommending UI changes to that product in this
    conference.
    
    (can you tell its 2am here?)
    Andrew

    I quite agree with you . This conference is not the right place for
    discussing how things could be better presented in DECdecision .
    However , we believe we must give our customers a complete set of tools
    that answers their needs : some customers need to produce graphical
    outputs of their network activity . What do you sell them ? If you sell
    DECdecision , your customer will ask you how to get the informations
    from RdB . It is not a matter of how things should be presented , but
    how tools are integrated .
    According to some customers , the fact you must run SQL or RDO and do
    some " declare schema file ... " & "show tables *" commands before
    using DECdecision is unbearable .
    
    It is not funny for us to tell you most of the time about problems and
    customers' requirements while you are working and creating a very good
    product . We don't do it on purpose . We compete against other vendors
    and have to be better than them .
    
    regards , christophe       

This should help making DECdecision easier to use for customers.
There are three ways to determine what the rdb relation is in MCC_EXPORT.RDB
is.  DECdecision needs to the relation when it is first set up. 

1.	Know the how the relation names are made up.  If the customer exported 
	a NODE4 entity the relation name is MCC_NODE4.  If they exported a
	NODE4 foo line QNA-0 the relationship name would MCC_NODE4_LINE

2.	Use SQL.  Mention that SQL is considered standard, learning something
	about it is valuable.

3.      Use RDO.  The commands are 
		1. Run sys$system:RDO
		2. INVOKE DATABASE FILENAME mcc_system:mcc_export.rdb
		3. SHOW RELATION


Another point think Sales needs answer PC world expections. On a PC searching 
the disk for reasonable number of files to present as choice is great.
It needs to be explained that this does not scale on a cluster.  Our
cluster can have over 150 people logged in with 58 large disks, search this 
and asking them to choose would not make a customer happy.  This is a feature 
when they grow bigger.

Still a question how do both somehow.


Do the competive systems have these features?  Do they have tightly integrated
graphs?  

I have exported some data , and would like to have a look at it , using
decdecision. I followed the procedure as mentioned in .0, but got the
following error:

I started DECaccess , database maintenance, Reference RDB/VMS Relation window.
Typed in the name of the  RDB file, the name for new table 'MY_TABLE' and
the name of RDB/VMS relation MCC_NODE4. When I click on OK, I get the error

*****************************

FOLDER LOCKED
You cannot update this folder now

The error returned from RDB/VMS is listed below. For more information
refer to ....blablabla (which I did but that doesn't give much more info)

%RDB-E-NO_DUP, index field value already exists; duplicates not allowed for x
*********************************************

I can acces the RDB file with SQL and RDO directly 

$run sys$system:rdo
RDO>invoke database filename decision$access_db
RDO>show relations
User relations in Database with filename decision$access_db
        MCC_NODE4
        MCC_NODE4_CIRCUIT
        MCC_NODE4_LINE
        MCC_SNMP_INTERFACE
        VDD$INDEX
        VDD$VIA$ROOTDIR

 
So what is the problem? 

Thanks 

Timo