You can see for yourself the many features available to you.  In many large companies, the steps to begin an evaluation can take a long time.  Here you can have the benefit of an Evaluation, without any paperwork.  Your use of this system is free, and without obligation. 

It is hoped because you can test everything yourself on-line, a formal Evaluation will not even be deemed necessary.

Here are some important URLs:

The index to all RoAccess documentation. Click here.

The index to all RoAccess on-line documentation. Click here. 

Passwords to the Demo Accounts.  Click here. 

Actually run RoAccess against a Rochade Repository.  Click here 

Platform:

Windows NT 4.0, SP5

600 Mhz Pentium III

384 Mb RAM, 10000 RPM Cheetah disk, fast/wide SCSI

Rochade 5.30.016 server with Autopilot 3.40.005 installed

IIS 4.0 (Microsoft Internet Information Server) is the WEB server from the standard NT 4.0 Option Pack, although it could be IIS 5.0 as well

freeware perl from www.activestate.com

Both Rochade and the WEB server are on the same machine, but need not be.

 

Server:	A constantly running program that allows client/server connects to up to 12 databases.
Database:	a file. Contains multiple ItemTypes and multiple Subject Areas
Subject Area:	A subset collection of ItemTypes (TABLES)
ItemType:	Like a relational database TABLE and has Items and Attributes
Item:	Like a relational table ROW. Each Item has a up to 32 character unique identifier and has Attributes.
Attribute:	Like a relational table COLUMN
	Attribute Kinds: Value Attribute: can hold a 32 character value Text Attribute: can hold 1 or millions of lines of text.  A link attribute is a special kind of text attribute Binary/Blob Attribute: can hold files and graphics (text or binary).

This Subject Area contains things like CONTRACTS, PERSON, DOCUMENT and ORGANIZATION.   The RIM defines these ItemTypes and others with relationships (link attributes) that are intuitive.

The information and skills you develop will be the very same for Subject Areas with hundreds of ItemTypes and hundreds of thousands of Items.

So lets start with the easy stuff.

DEMO_RO - a read-only account.  You can view everything, but cannot create, delete, rename or change anything.

DEMO_LIM - mostly read-only, but limited ability to add/update, and you will be unable to see some attributes.

DEMO_UPD - full create/delete/rename/update information.

        DEMO_UPD: ABC312
        DEMO_LIM:  XAZ524
        DEMO_RO:   PQR637

Again, no contracts, agreements or any other obligations are involved.

Go to the Evaluation Site

Select one of the 3 user accounts you want to test, and enter its username and password

Initially there will be only one Subject Area, so just select it.

Select Display or Edit mode.  Don't worry, you can't hurt anything because full security is in effect.  But start with Display Mode

If you had hundreds of ItemTypes in you system, you can enter a wildcard filter

Click the "List Item Types for This Application" button.

Most people ignore the manuals, and learn by themselves, and then pickup up details later from the manuals.  An intuitive system should not really require much initial information.  Each screen has a Help button at the top.
 
 

Hints
	On-Line information about this screen.
	Switch from Display Mode to Edit Mode and vice versa, click on the green Display or red Edit Mode icons at the top of the screens.
	Go back to the TypeList screen to list the ItemTypes.
	An Item can have multiple versions, shared or unshared.  This will find all version in all Subject Areas.
	An optional class of reports that show relationships between Items that are created by the User using Autopilot.  We've created a few of these for demo purposes.
	This small blue info ball appears to the left of each attribute on the ItemGet screen.  Clicking it gets info about this attribute.   It tells about what the attribute is, why it is used, allowable values or ranges, helps, link attribute targets and more.  It can be as detailed as you wish.
	In Edit Mode, allows you to create a new Item (row).  If you do not have create permission, it will be "grayed out".
	In Edit Mode, allows you to delete an Item (row).   If you do not have delete permission, it will be "grayed out".
	Each Item has a unique identifier.  This allows you to change that identifier.   If you do not have rename permission, it will be "grayed out".
	You have the ability to create stored procedures on the Rochade Repository and execute them over the WEB.  Since you write them, they can do anything, even output HTML for formatting, colors and images.  None are implemented for this demo.

Just click on them to see what happens.  Just hit BACK to get back to the ItemList screen.

For this demo, there are just a few Items.  However in the real world there can be hundreds of thousands.  You can enter a wildcard in the Item Filter field before clicking on the ItemType you want to list.

If you want to do a text search on Text, Value and Link attributes to select the Items, click the "Extended Filtering" button before clicking the desired ItemType button.  First you will have to view some of the Items to find what text you might want to do your test searches on.  Remember, this can search Value, Link and Text attributes all at the same time!

You can specify if you want to display Active, Inactive, Active/Unreferenced and other classes of Items.   For now, keep the system default of Active.

Lets start by clicking on the PERSON ItemType button.

For the PERSON ItemType, you will see a few Items (people) we entered and possibly some entered by other Evaluators.

Click on "FAUSAK_GREG" first an proceed below.  Later you can experiment with the others,
 

You have just mastered the basics of RoAccess! 
 
 

An email address entered, and it automatically became a clickable URL.  Click on it to verify it.

His picture is stored (in the Rochade Repository) and can be viewed by clicking on the image icon in PERSON_PICTURE.  For slow data lines, you might decide to require pictures to be clicked to be seen.  Click on it.

The Item Last Updated field is an option put here for demo purposes.

Note the "Item is Referenced By" section at the bottom.  Every time you view an Item, you see forward links and reverse links at the same time.  You see your data in context. These are also Items, and can be viewed immediately by clicking on these hyperlinks.

Note his picture is set to Autodisplay, so it comes up immediately when this Item is viewed.

Also note that several other Items refer to this Item.

First the Boring Stuff:

The Rochade Repository handles relationships between Items/rows extremely well.   A Path Report defines a query to find all the Items that have certain relationships with regards to a starting Item (seed) you provide at run-time. 

For instance, if a Subject Area has ItemTypes of Schema, Table and Column, a Path Report might be for a given Schema, display all its Tables and all their attributes.  Another Path Report might be for a given Attribute name show its column and Schema it is in. 

A more complex one would be for impact analysis, answering the question, if I change this attribute from C10 to C12, list all the databases, tables, attributes, screen forms, batch programs, backup files and command files that reference/use this attribute!  Now you know all you have to look at to make sure the changes are made in all the appropriate places.

There are two basic types of Path Reports:

Text.  This outputs lines showing the Items and their ItemTypes that match the "path" specifications.  For very long results, you can use your browser to text search to find particular Items of interest.  Each line is hyperlinked, so clicking on it, brings up the full ItemGet screen for that item.

Graphic.  This outputs the exact same information, but in a graphic fashion with lines (showing links) and circles (for Items).  Clicking on the circles brings up the full ItemGet screen for the Item.  A visual picture is the best way of showing relationships between things.

To demonstrate a Graphical Path Report:

Get the TypeList screen on the left frame

Click on ORGANIZATION

This lists the organization records we entered

Click on the Path Reports icon at the top

At the top, select "Simple Graphics" or "Advanced Graphics" as the type of report

There are two available path reports.  Use the default, the first one

Click OK at the bottom of the page

This lists the ORGANIZATION records

Select AUGUST

Click the "Display Path Report" button

This gives a graphic on the right.  Pretty fancy!  Each circle represents and Item, and each line represents a relationship between those items

Now in the left frame select AUGUST.NET, and click the "Display Path Report" button.  Again pretty fancy.

If you want the graph to be a bit bigger, on the left frame, increase the "Relative Size" popup, and click the "Display Path Report" button. 

Try the different options, like the Advanced "Top-to-Bottom or Left-to-Right" button.

Note: each ItemType has a different color and shape assigned to it.  So you can pick out ItemTypes, like PROJECT, by browsing for the same colored shapes or colors.

Now on the graphics, click one of the colored circles, and a new windows pops up with the ItemGet screen with full details for that Item that the circle represents.  Resize the original window smaller to make room on the right of the screen for the new Item information screen, and make it a bit smaller so both windows can be seen at the same time.  Each time you click a circle on the graphic, its Item info display shows up in the New window.  On a screen at 1280x1024, you can put both windows next to each each other

When clicking on circles, those of SIMPSON_DENNIS and FULLFORD_ANDREW are the most interesting because the picture of these folks will automatically display

The basic text and value attributes are filled in and stored by entering them in the fields and clicking the "Update Database" button. 

However, Link and Blob/Binary attributes are loaded via separate screens because they are specialized.

View the Item: CONTRACT PURCHASE_ROACCESS in Update Mode.  Click the Add Link icon for the attribute CONTRACT_INVOLVES_ORGANIZATIONS.  Select an existing Item of type ORGANIZATION or enter a new Item Name (to be created).  Then you can enter one of the allowed Link Qualifiers from the popup list, one of the choices being no Link Qualifier.  You will not be allowed to enter any other Link Qualifier.

This is a RoAccess extended feature, because Autopilot will allow you to enter any qualifier at all, so there may be misspellings or a variety of phrases.  Then click the "Add Link" button. Click the Success button, and the Item will be re-displayed showing the new link(s).

The CONTRACT Link Attribute CONTRACT_MODIFIED_BY_ADDENDUM is a bit different. While it also has a list of allowable Link Qualifiers, it will allow you to enter any Link Qualifier you wish if the popup list does not contain a reasonable Link Qualifier.  Again, this is just another RoAccess extended metadata option for Link Attributes.
 

You can change the link qualifier by instead clicking the "Update Link" icon.  You select which link is to have its Link Qualifier changed, and they do it.

Finally you can delete/remove a link(s) by clicking the "Delete Link" icon.  Select one or more links to be deleted, then hit Ok.
 

Note: for graphic images (.jpg, .gif, .tiff, etc.), if the description has the keyword "Autodisplay" on the line, that graphic will automatically be displayed when that item is viewed.  Otherwise, you will have to click on the icon to view the graphic.   When using fast networks, Autodisplay is very nice.  However, if primarily using slower lines, then the pages will come up faster if the graphics are set to not Autodisplay.

Why use spreadsheets?  After loading a lot of data, you may want to see a particular attribute or attributes just do double check what is being loaded.  The WEB format is nice for this.  However when viewing a great deal of data, it makes more sense to output the results to a comma separated output, then do a Save As to a file.  Then load that file into Excel.  Now you can do some pretty fancy things, and Excel is really fast for spreadsheet manipulations, sorting, etc.