Documentation Overview

Last update on October 25, 2001
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Using The Table of Contents

MDMS documentation topics are listed at the top of the Table of Contents (left-hand window). Selecting a topic takes you to a more detailed section of the table of contents. Selecting a detailed reference displays the associated document in this window.

FEI (Version 3) Topics

How to install the FEI3 client software

Release Notes

Overview: This document describes the FEI features and architecture. It also describes a couple of sample applications to enable you to better understand how FEI is used.
Command Line Utilities: FEI comes with a set of about a dozen command line utilities that are run from a command line environment or shell, giving the appearance that FEI is part of your local environment. Use the tutorial and reference to get acquainted with these programs. The utilities themselves document their syntax, so once you've read this material, just using the utilities on their own should be enough.
Graphical Utilities: These are graphical user interface programs. The documentation consists of a brief description of what's available and then references the documents that you can also directly reference from the utilities help system.; There's nothing in this section currently. Stay tuned.
API's: Documents in this section cover tutorials and coding examples for FEI application program interfaces (API's). Definitions for the different classes in each API are also included here.; FEI API's running on Sun Solaris, x86 Linux, SGI, Tru64, and Win32 systems. (Other ports are possible, but currently the market is in these areas.)

Currently only the C++ API is avalable.
Install Guides: FEI is a distributed system. There are two parts to it, the client and the server. Installation guides for both parts of the systems are provided. Anyone installing FEI needs to read the client installation guide. Only organizations deploying FEI servers need read the server guide.
Administration & FEI Database: For the most part the information in this section is of interest to people administering an FEI domain, although some material may be insightful for anyone using FEI. The information on the FEI database is also given in some detail. Normally, only administrators need this material, but if you're accessing the database directly, this information is useful.
Kerberos: Since FEI uses Kerberos authentication services, we have includes a couple of links to Kerberos sites. The information here has nothing to say about FEI; they are foreign sites where you can learn more about Kerbers if you need to.

DBMS Topics

Mission Databases: Overview lists the Mission databases supported by MIPL. From this page you can get to a description of each Mission and its database - if the database is currently defined. You can drill down in a Mission database page to descriptions of all the objects in the database.
Command Line Utilities: dbView is a command line utility used for interactive database access. It has a wide range of commands to make database access as easy as possible, including macros that you can define to hide the complexity of SQL statements. The macros can be saved and used in future sessions. dbView also offers the ability to query for a set of files passed on file attributes and then to retrieve the file using FEI.

The Tutorial & Reference is old, 1994, but still good to look at if you want to learn the details of dbView. It's written as a tutorial, so you're introduced to functionality by example. The Tutorial & Reference is in Adobe PDF format is 157 pages long.

The Quick Reference will give you the basics, and it contains information about most of the newer functions. dbq executes a single SQL command from the command line. This utility is most useful when embedded in a scripting language like Perl. A single line is then used to state the query and get any rows returned in an array.
Application Program Interface: qi is a C library of high-level database access functions. (Currently used to connect to Sybase databases.) It contains functions to provide passwords to databases supplied by the MDMS password server among other things.

cmdGen is a utility to generate C code for an SQL statement. The C code uses the qi library and outputs a .h, .c, Makefile and a main driver program.
Password Server: Provides your user password (sent to you encrypted) for a particular server using your Kerberos credentials. Most often used for providing passwords to database managment systems.
Mission Databases: This section describes the database objects (tables, stored procedures, etc.) used by particular missions.
Sybase Documentation: Links to the Sybase Web site's documentation section.