Looking for a little help and the docs aren't much use here:

On my D3 linux system, I have:
- A "real" account called FNH.
- A "Q" or synonym account called LON-PARTS of FNH
- A "Q" or synonym account called LON-SERVICE of FNH

LON-PARTS is in the system file like this:

:ED SYSTEM LON-PARTS
top
..P
001 Q
002 MDS
003 FNH
004
005
006
007 FOO
008 SYS2
009 L
010 10
eoi 010

And LON-SERVICE is like this:

:ED SYSTEM LON-SERVICE
top
..P
001 Q
002 FNH
003
004
005
006
007 FOO
008 SYS2
009 L
010 10
eoi 010

Which one is correct? Why would you want to allow access to the
accounts files via the MDS system, but not actually be in the account?
The major drawback I can see with pointing to the MDS is that you
cannot set a q-pointer to a file in the q-pointed "account" because
techinally it does not exist I suppose. (Not that that is a good
practice, but still...)

Thanks in Advance,

Jay Alosa

Jay wrote:



First one with MDS was invalid so question no longer applies. You
_are_ in the account with a q-pointer, it like calling someone Joe or
Joseph, it's the same guy. If someone calls him Joe, it's probably a
social discussion. If they call him Joseph it's probably formal and
his responses may be different.

You set q-pointers to accounts for various reasons including:
- One entry point will present one menu to specific people, like
Accounting, where another entry point will present the Warehouse menu,
though all users are in the same account.
- Some entry points will not present a menu at all, so that external
calls (GUI, Web Services, etc) can get direct access to TCL for
executing programs and commands.

HTH

Thanks for the reply Tony. Glad to have someone of your caliber
responding here [end of gratuitous brown nosing]

I totally understand the reason why we have different Q-Accounts.
(Different menus, etc).
You stated that the MDS pointer is invalid, and yet that is how most
of my Q-Accounts are set up. (I didn't set this up originally). Is
that wrong? Should I change it?

Assuming you have LON-PARTS, a Q-Account of "real" account FNH, what
would drive someone to set it up this way:

001 Q
002 MDS
003 FNH

instead of this way:

001 Q
002 FNH

Example #2 is how I was always taught. Both seem to work, with the
exception that in the first case, you cannot set a q-pointer to any
file in LON-PARTS from an unrelated account.

Thanks,

Jay

Thanks Frank:

I agree with your explanation, although I also heard from a friend off-
line that he recalled an earlier flavor of pick and possibly on a
different *nix OS, that actually needed the pointer to go to the MDS.
His recollection with something like AP or Ultimate on AIX from 25
years ago.

In either case, I'm changing my q-accounts to drop the MDS reference
because you cannot open files in other accounts via an OPEN statement
in BASIC when the q-account is set up like that... and as usual I
wasted a whole day chasing something minuscule down.

Have a great day!

"Jay" wrote [paraphrased]
Probably somebody was working from faulty memory, and had a career history of getting
away with using
001 Q
002 FNH
003 MDS
which would furnish a working alias account for 'real' account FNH,
but one day they ended up swapping lines 2 and 3 and just never tested their work.

And by 'testing their work,' I mean for example that
COUNT LON-PARTS,, {Done from ANY account}
should give you same tally as you'd get from
COUNT FNH,, or
COUNT FNH,MD, or
LOGTO FNH then doing COUNT MD

When in doubt, use the item mds SYSPROG as your guide --
it is supplied with the base D3 as an alias for DM