MAINTENANCE TOOLS

    This category of tools covers a list of tools that are new for RATS V2, but provide means of completing the general maintenance tasks rather than replacing a specific tool we already have. The first tool(s) we will need will be something to load and unload flat files. This will read the standard UNIX flat files, and populate our database. It will also take the data in our database, and output the relevant parts into special flat files containing RATS specific data. This would normally cover initial population of the DB, operational dumps, and backups. But we are also storing some RATS (V1 and V2) specific data, as well as some data that is entirely new for RATS V2. So this loader and unloader will also have to generate flat files representing that data. Since this data is RATS specific, it's format can safely be left undefined until implementation. By using the existing flat files as templates for loading and unloading, these loaders also give us a tool for rolling back a DB installation to the old flat file methods. This will cover our basic installation, operational, and backup maintenance. We will also need some means of data integrity checking and in-DB cleanup if there is minor corruption. This tool will basically check to see that the data in a given row of a table has the proper flags and enough data in other tables to justify it being there. If not, it will either be hidden in place, or removed to a flat file or a "fix-it" table, and logged someplace so that an administrator can fix it properly or confirm final deletion. Once again it should be noted that there is no plan for maintaining historical data that the standard unix flat files do not maintain. Cleanup logs may be kept by the system administrator, but that is clearly not the same functionality.