| Title: | DECmcc user notes file. Does not replace IPMT. | 
| Notice: | Use IPMT for problems. Newsletter location in note 6187 | 
| Moderator: | TAEC::BEROUD | 
| Created: | Mon Aug 21 1989 | 
| Last Modified: | Wed Jun 04 1997 | 
| Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 | 
| Number of topics: | 6497 | 
| Total number of notes: | 27359 | 
    I've been reading note 4022 about testing the reachability of a
    DECserver.
    There's a possibility to do the TEST command to a server which sends 
    a packet to the server which will in turn resend the packet. The result 
    of this command is 'succesfull' if the server is reachable or another 
    message if the test fails.
    Why is it not possible to create an alarm rule which executes the
    test-command and verifies the result of this command? I think this
    feature would also be very interesting for other type of entity's.
    
    -Geert-	
    
| T.R | Title | User | Personal Name | Date | Lines | 
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4421.1 | Nobody interested ? | BACHUS::FOLENS | Wed Feb 03 1993 03:24 | 5 | |
|     Is there really nobody who would be interested in this feature? I think
    this would be more obvious than testing on a status parameter.
    
    -Geert-
    
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| 4421.2 | TOOK::GUERTIN | MCC Managing everything for everyone everywhere | Wed Feb 03 1993 10:41 | 24 | |
|     It's a key feature that's missing from Alarms.  The Alarms FM has a
    special purpose in life:  Detecting Errors in the network.  The TEST
    command is used to test for errors.  In order for Alarms to be fully
    functional it must be able to test for errors in other ways than just
    polling for attributes and checking if the attributes are what they
    should be (and listening for events).  The problem is that it would
    tricky to come up with a syntax that would be generic and would not
    require a significant development effort.
    
      For example:
    	create domain x rule test1 expression=(TEST(DECserver foo))
    
    could be set up to fire the rule "test1" if the TEST request returned
    anything other that a successful response.  Is this all that you are
    asking for?  I believe that for some applications, you pass in
    arguments, or you get return arguments which describe the results of
    the test.  In these cases, this syntax would not work, and one could
    argue that Alarms is broken (Major Functionality not working
    correctly).
    
    In any case, it would be more productive to enter ideas like these
    in the EMF_REQ notes conference.
    
    -Matt.
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