The Report Writer extracts data from various data files and generates output that is suitable for printing. The report is generated in four steps:

1. Examine the report definition.
2. Collect the applicable data.
3. Sort the collected data in the correct order.
4. Format and output the sorted data.

Over 220 predefined report definitions are included, providing a wide variety of possible examples

1.6 FORMAT Program

The FORMAT program is designed to read and write fixed length, blocked records in either ASCII or EBCDIC from either LABEL or NOLABEL media. FORMAT also allows for numbering the records, removing tabs, converting everything to uppercase and several other very useful features. Features exist to make an image copy of the entire medium, and optionally put that image file on disk. Such an image file will behave exactly like an on-line medium when used with the FORMAT program.

MEDIA is a user-friendly, configurable program which transparently handles all aspects of tape library management and backup/restoration. It is composed of three separate programs, MEDIA, VAULT, and BCKMGR. These programs are designed to function together seamlessly to give you control over two of the most important elements of your computer system: the media library and backup/restoration.

MEDIA is a program that performs the maintenance tasks associated with organizing and managing off-line media. By using MEDIA you no longer need to have an OPERATOR present in the computer room at the exact moment you issue a command. You can submit a job, and MEDIA executes your program and requests the necessary media automatically. Whenever the OPERATOR responds to the mount request, MEDIA reacts appropriately.

MEDIA makes it easy to:

• Assign media to users
• Track media, (i.e., tapes and removable disks assigned to you)
• Find out which files are on which medium
• Release media to the system when you no longer need them
• Add a tape or disk to the on-line catalog for temporary use and then delete it
• Create a batch job to perform medium related functions.

VAULT gives you a simple way to identify and restore files from off-line storage, without having to wait for assistance from the MANAGER in the event you should lose or damage any of your files. VAULT maintains a DATABASE of all files that have been backed up and allows you to restore files which you own.

BCKMGR allows you to perform backups of all your on-line media to off-line media while maintaining a detailed database record of the backups. This may also be done with or without MANAGER assistance.

2.1 Overview of MEDIA Manager

Without MEDIA, managing and organizing off-line media can be an arduous and time consuming task. MEDIA's batch handling facility eliminates the need for an OPERATOR present in the computer room to process your commands. MEDIA executes your program and requests the necessary media automatically. Extensive information is maintained on-line, describing the media and their contents in the MEDIA database.

2.1.1 General information

Management of off-line media requires monitoring and organizing all aspects of tape and disk maintenance. Time can be wasted doing some or all of the following tasks:

• Tracking and labeling media
• Organizing media into the various pools
• Read checking and error checking
• Manually updating the media and file information
• Tracking file expiration dates
• Allocating media and devices

With MEDIA all of these jobs are automated as the result of two major features:

• The ability to deal with all off-line media as if it was on-line.
• Media can easily be mounted using an alias name that reflects it's contents.

A particular file can be located on an off-line medium by a user, who then can request it to run a job. Media may be utilized and tracked from several sources besides those which it created. These include:

• Media created before the MEDIA software was installed
• Media received from another source
• Media written by another system

A medium may be mounted for the current session only or exist in the MEDIA database.

2.1.2 The on-line database

The MEDIA database is accessible on-line, allowing you to find any particular medium and what files it contains at any time, without having to mount each medium or rely on a manually updated information system. The database consists of information about every tape and removable disk or other storage device in the library. Whenever a medium is modified, the on-line information is automatically updated to reflect the new contents.

There are two types of informational files about media:

1. The header information file contains information about each medium, tape type, length, density, format, disk size, protection, initialization,and availability status.
2. The contents information file is an optional on-line file that lists the contents of each medium, all of the files written on the medium and information about each file (creation date, version number, size). It is necessary to include a file specification in the DIRECTORY command to access the contents information file.

Both header and contents information files can be accessed using the MEDIA command DIRECTORY, discussed below.

2.1.3 Useful concepts and definitions for using MEDIA

Commands: There are three types of MEDIA commands: DATABASE commands, job commands and device commands.

1. Database commands: These are commands that search, modify, or add to the on-line database. Database commands include DIRECTORY, RENAME_TO and SET. You will use this type of command most often.
2. Job commands: These MEDIA commands allow for the passing of VMS commands and command files to a separate MEDIA job. The VMS commands needed to allocate a drive and mount and dismount the tape are automatically added.
3. Device commands: These commands affect the storage devices directly, and include: MOUNT, INITIALIZE, ALLOCATE and UPDATE. These are not usually used by the general user because they require the presence of an OPERATOR to immediately respond to the command. Information about Device Commands can be found in a later section.

Qualifiers: This is a part of a MEDIA, VAULT, BCKMGR or VMS command that allows you to fine-tune an aspect of the command. Some qualifiers direct the way MEDIA searches its database. Other qualifiers refer to database fields and allow you to set display field values. Qualifiers are preceeded by a slash character (/) and are order-independent. For example, /MOUNT=ANSI/LOG is equivalent to /LOG/MOUNT=ANSI. The most commonly used qualifiers for a particular command are mentioned in the section on that command. For a complete listing of all possible media or file fields that can be altered by general users, see the Reference Manual.

Wildcards: VMS wildcards can be used to apply the command to multiple media that fit the specification. They can be used in file names, media names, and alias name specifications. Do not confuse the VMS wildcard * and the job command * described in the section on job commands.

Symbol	Name	Action
*	asterisk	matches any alphanumeric combination of any length. For example, ACCT* can be compared with ACCT1, ACCTSDEPT, ACCT.
%	percent	matches any single alphanumeric character. For example, ACCT% can be compared with ACCT1 and ACCTS but not with ACCT or ACCTDEPT.
...	ellipses	in a directory specification, indicates that all subdirectories are also affected.

2.1.4 Types of media and their formats

A medium (plural: media) refers to any removable storage item. This includes magnetic tape reels, removable disk packs, and cartridges. Most tapes contain only files and do not maintain directories or subdirectory structures. Tape devices include: 9 track tapes, TK50 and TA90 cartridges, 8mm helix drives, and so on. Tapes may be of the following types:

• ANSI labeled tapes (no directory structure)
• BACKUP tapes
• FOREIGN tapes (no directory structure)
• IBM_SL labeled tapes (no directory structure)
• UNLABELED tapes (no directory structure)
• Other tapes that are none of the above (no directory structure)

Normally a high percentage of tapes in a VAX/VMS library will be ANSI labeled or BACKUP tapes.

Disk devices include: RPO6, RA60, optical disks, floppies, and other devices. Two main types occur:

1. FILES-11 is the standard on-line disk format which contains a directory structure
2. FOREIGN (no directory structure)

MEDIA can be used to keep an on-line directory to show what titles are stored on your tapes and disks.

2.1.5 Ways of referring to media

Each medium can have as many as three different names associated with it: the external ID, the internal ID, and an alias.

• The external ID or serial number is the alphanumeric character string marked on the outside of the medium. It is used by the operator to identify the medium in the media library. The external ID for removable disk packs can consist of a maximum of nine characters. However, for tapes, a maximum length of six characters is recommended since their internal labels can only be six characters long. For tapes used with VMS BACKUP ¹ the label should meet the requirements of that utility. The label checking routines in that utility reduce the effective label to just 4 digits.
• The internal ID is the name magnetically encoded on the medium itself and is used by the computer to verify that the correct medium has been mounted by the operator. Usually, this is the same as the external ID.
• The alias is the descriptive name that a user assigns to the medium and uses to refer to it. Commands can be issued based on this name, and MEDIA will translate the operator request to refer to the external ID. The alias can be any alphanumeric combination of 1 to 21 characters.

A version number follows the alias in the directory listings, separated from it by a semicolon, in the format aaaaaa;n. The version number reflects the number of different media that have been given the same alias.

The version number of a medium is 0, if an alias has not been provided. When the medium is named, the version number starts as 1. As new media are assigned using the same alias, the version number is incremented to create a new name on each assign operation.

2.1.6 Pools

Media are categorized into three groups (called pools) within the library.

• The available pool consists of media which are available for assignment to users. When a medium is moved into the Available Pool, all attribute information is reset to the defaults and the medium is re-initialized when it is next used. General users can allocate media from this pool without OPERATOR or MANAGER intervention.
• The allocated pool consists of media that have been assigned to a particular users. These media are in active use and can be accessed by the general user to whom they are assigned using MEDIA
• The released pool consists of media that were allocated to users, but are no longer needed by them. MEDIA holds these media with data intact for a specified length of time (as determined by the MANAGER) before returning them to the Available Pool. This allows a safety margin for the user to change his mind about needing a particular medium and a chance to clean or recertify a medium before it is re-used.

Figure 2-1 Media Pools

Figure 2-1 depicts the pool cycle within MEDIA. These pools are not necessarily physically separated from each other within the library because the pools are invisibly managed by MEDIA. If desired the pools can be divided into subpools that can be associated with different job queues, different types (i.e. cartridge tapes vs. nine track tapes), different functions or other useful attribute. For example; TK50 cartridges can be added to the AVAILABLE pool and assigned the subpool type of TK50 to distinguish them from the subpool TAPE that contains standard 9 track reel tapes.

2.1.7 Protection and Privilege

Protection and privilege are mechanisms for securing the system and the data it stores.

Protection refers to the control of access to any medium set up by the MANAGER in the user authorization file. In other words, certain files or programs are "protected" so that they cannot be accessed unless the MANAGER lowers the protection on these files to allow access to them. There are four categories of users as shown below.

Category	Description
S or SYSTEM	Any user with the MANAGER or BYPASS privilege or who has a system group UIC number.
O or OWNER	Any user with the same UIC number.
G or GROUP	Any user with the same group UIC number.
W or WORLD	All other users.

The user can set the degree of access to one of his media using one of four protection bits as shown below.

Bit name	Meaning
R	Gives read only access
W	Gives write access
I	Gives initialize access
D	Gives release access

The owner of a medium can always set the protection string for that medium, using the command format:

$ MEDIA MEDIUM_NAME SET/PROTECTION=(S:RWID,O:RWID,G:RWID,W:RWID)

For each category of user, the owner includes the desired protection bits to allow that category of user that degree of access. For example, if a userwants to restrict the access to her tape JOHNSON1 to allow herself and the system to read, write, initialize or delete, the world to read only, and members of her own group to read and write to JOHNSON1, she enters:

$ MEDIA JOHNSON1 SET/PROTECTION=(S:RWID,O:RWID,G:RW,W:R)

Privilege refers to the level of access a user has. You are assigned a level of privilege by the MANAGER that affects the degree to which you can manipulate the system and use certain commands. This means that certain processes and commands are off limits to you depending on your level of privilege. If any of the commands in this manual do not work for you, it could be that the MANAGER has limited your general user's access to certain parts of the system. You will have to contact your MANAGER to get things done that are not authorized by your level of privilege.

Privilege controls access to commands and the use of qualifiers by the user. There are three levels of privilege recognized by MEDIA, VAULT and BCKMGR:

• General user: The most basic level of privilege, this allows a user to access all media allocated to himself. He can also access another user's media to the degree that that user has set the UIC protection string, as discussed in the section above.
• MEDIA Operator: MEDIA OPERATOR privilege is granted to any user who has either the OPER or media operator authorization. These privileges are granted using the VMS AUTHORIZE command. See the Operations Guide chapter on Manager functions for specifics on how to grant authorization. It allows the user to have read access to all on-line information. He also has full access to any media allocated to himself.
• MEDIA Manager: The highest level of privilege, MEDIA MANAGER is assigned to the user who has the SYSPRV, BYPASS, SYSTEM_UIC or media manager authorization. These privileges are granted using the VMS AUTHORIZE command. See the Operations Guide chapter on Manager functions for specifics on how to grant authorization. The MEDIA MANAGER can access all media and perform any function on it.