Creating and managing attribute tables

This section shows how attributes can be defined as entries in a DMI table, with particular instances of each attribute within a table accessed via a key. It introduces the sample program phonebook and demonstrates some of the more advanced DMI commands and options available using rma2.

1. To register the phonebook component, enter:
   
   cd /usr/src/dmi/samples/CI_support/phonebook
   ./phonebook &

2. Go to the rma2 directory and examine the phonebook component's group structure by running rma2 to issue the DMI commands ListComponents and ListGroups. See ``Registering and managing components'' for more information.

   ---

   NOTE: Use your system's values for the phonebook ComponentID and Phone Book GroupID in the next step, if your values differ from those in the example.

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3. To list the Phone Book group's attributes, plus their values, enter:

   ./rma2 -x ListAttributes -c 5 -g 2000 -v

   You should see the following:

      ...
   Content = Attribute List
   ComponentName=Phone Book
   GroupName=Phone Book
   
   KeyValues
   StartValue
   8336328
   EndValue
   End
   
   Name=Telephone number
   AttributeID=1
   Access=Read-Write
   Type=Integer
   StartValue
   8336328
   EndValue
   End
   
   Name=User Name
   AttributeID=2
   Access=Read-Write
   Type=DisplayString(64)
   
   StartValue
   Bob
   EndValue
   End
   
   Name=Area
   AttributeID=3
   Access=Read-Write
   Type=DisplayString(64)
   
   StartValue
   NY
   EndValue
   End
   

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   NOTE: The attributes ``Telephone Number'', ``User Name'', and ``Area'' form a row of related values. Rows are then combined to form DMI tables. You can access individual or multiple table elements using the rma2 options -k key value and -r value=0, 1, 2, combined with the DMI commands SetAttribute, AddRow, and DeleteRow. (In this example, the telephone number is the key that uniquely identifies each row of data.)

   ---

4. Experiment with using rma2 command options and DMI commands to view and change individual attributes and entire rows in phonebook. For example, to view the row after the one displayed in the previous step (which had a key value of 8336328), enter:
   
   ./rma2 -x ListAttributes -c 5 -g 2000 -v -k 8336328 -r 2

   The output should show the ``Telephone Number'' as ``8311788'', the ``User Name'' as ``John'' and the ``Area'' as ``Chicago''.

5. To kill the phonebook process, enter:
   
   kill -2 process_ID.