Setting Up

Install

First you need to install the ClearView and ClearConnect webs on your Windows IIS server.  Then install the terminal emulation software components into the ClearConnect/QTermDownloads folder.

The Database

Now you need to use ClearView to setup the database, which mainly comprises the following tables:

• Departments
• Users
• Terminals
• Host Groups
• Hosts
• Profiles

The live database is named QTerm.mdb and resides in the _DataFiles folder.  There is also a QTermSample.mdb database which is a copy of the initial database.  It is not usable as such but can be used a starting point by taking a copy and renaming it QTerm.mdb.

Users are grouped within departments and terminals are assigned to users.  Each department is assigned a profile that applies to all users in the department (unless specifically overridden in the user properties).  The department model can be used to model your real life organization or you can decide to group users by any other criteria.  Or you can can just put all users into one department.  In the future you can easily split the department into two or more departments.

Host Groups are just as they sound; groups of host definitions.  Again, you could use just a single host group and put all your hosts in that group.  Bear in mind that even if you only have one physical ClearPath host you may have several applications which are seen as separate logical hosts.  Host groups are supported so that you can define a subset of host applications that you want to make available to a given set of users (department) and not to others. You do this by setting the HostGroup in a profile.

The profile is perhaps the most powerful entry in the database.  It governs what users can do and how they access the host.  The grouping of similar users into a department naturally allows for a profile to be identified for the department.  Therefore any changes made to the profile apply immediately to all users in that department.

Creating Users

The first stage is to create entries for all your users and there are a few ways you can do this.  You can simply open up a department (Settings/Dept View/Departments) and start adding individual users or you could:

• Use the Populate Department button on the department properties page.  for example you could set the number of users to 250, the number of terminals per user to 2 and click on the button.  Then you can edit individual user settings as you need.
• If you have used a previous version of server based Quickware emulation you can import the users and terminal definitions from the terms.txt file into a department.  Similarly you can import the host definitions from the hosts.txt file into a host group.
• Use a combination of the above by populating the department with users and terminals.  Then export the department to a text file.  Edit the text file in a text editor or spreadsheet and import back into a department.
• The ClearConnect login page has an Options button which displays extra features, including a Register button.  The register button is mainly intended for users who used previous levels of QTerm server based support.  As such, they would have a settings (.cfg) file on the desktop, containing their terminal details.  Clicking on Find Terminals in the register page invokes client side script that attempts to use the FileSystemObject to open and read the .settings file.  Depending upon your browser security options,  it may deny this operation.  You can set the browser security to the lowest in order to try this, but it's obviously not something we'd advise your users to do.  However, the Register page is still useful.  You can type in the terminal names (and not click on Find Terminals) or leave them blank so as to just register the user.  A user created in this way is assigned to the Registration Department configured on the General settings page.

The Profile

The profile entry is the most complex table in the database and deserves some explanation.  A profile captures together many attributes and these are applied to all members of a department, or a user may override the department profile by being assigned a specific profile.  At initial install time you will decide whether to use the supplied profiles, modify them or to create your own.  Whichever way, it is advisable to carefully check the file locations and the software versions. 

When, in the future, you receive software updates you will need to set the new software versions in the profiles.  Note that you can use different versions for different profiles; you would have to rename the code files so they could coexist in the QTermDownloads folder, or create subfolders for the different versions.

The profile contains entries that are common, entries that are specific to QTerm and entries that are specific to browser access.  This is so that each user can use either method to access a host.