Database Navigation

The AMOS administrative interface offers a dynamic, context sensitive front-end which allows browsing the database tables hosted in the AMOS system. It offers several utilities including the following:

• Search: Sequential search. All the results of the query are displayed one by one on demand. The interface provides nice features to browse these results by selecting search state sensitive, dynamically generated search options "Next" and "Previous".
• Show matches in a table: All the tuples satisfying the query are displayed in a table.
• Show matches in an editable table: As in the previosu case, all the tuples satisfying the query are displayed, but this option enables the AMOS administrator to edit the data right on the results provided.
• Insert: Allows the insertion of a new tuple of the current table, previously checking all the mandatory fields have been filled in. It also ensures the element to be inserted doesn't exist in the table already.
• Delete: Deletes all the tuples that instantiate the query. Watch out: Empty form fields instantiate anything!
• Modify: Allows editing a given tuple of the table.
• Clean the form: After a search action, this option can be used to refresh the form, providing a new one with all fields empty.
• Answer about submission: This action is to be used by an AMOS reviewer upon approval or not of a given package proposal. The package will be accepted in case all checkboxes are ticked (default) and rejected if any of them has been unticked by the reviewer. In the text box below, the reviewer can write any further comment about the package that will be submitted to the authors along with an automatically generated text associated to the field unticked, if any.

Note that when any query is made over a database table, the information written into the form fields is taken as prolog terms. This way, any empty field of the form is translated into a free variable and therefore will unify all the corresponding arguments of the given table.

Besides, provides three different search modes are provided:

• Normal search mode: This is the most restrictive search mode. The results of the query will be just those tuples which exactly match the fields specified.
• Case insensitive search mode: In this mode upper and lower case is indistinct.
• Wildcards search mode: Implements a search where wildcards can be used. Special characters are:

  *

  Matches any string, including the null string.

  ?

  Matches any single character.

  [...]

  Matches any one of the enclosed characters. A pair of characters separated by a minus sign denotes a range; any character lexically between those two characters, inclusive, is matched. If the first character following the [ is a ^ then any character not enclosed is matched. No other character is special inside this construct. To include a ] in a character set, you must make it the first character. To include a `-', you must use it in a context where it cannot possibly indicate a range: that is, as the first character, or immediately after a range.

  |

  specifies an alternative. Two regular expressions A and B with | in between form an expression that matches anything that either A or B will match.

  {...}

  groups alternatives inside larger patterns.

  '

  Quotes a special character (including itself).

Reviewing Procedure

AMOS interface for reviewing packages displays first a list of the packages currently pending of validation. Here, a reviewer can click on any of them and be forwarded to a new screen showing the complete description of the package. The reviewer can now check the package and decide whether or not to accept it into AMOS, using the above described action "Answer about submission". After doing so, a reviewer can use the current interface to check further pending packages or insert, modify or delete package proposals himself.

Editing the Dictionary

This interface allows browsing the dictionary terms currently available in AMOS as well as editing, deleting, modifying and enter new ones.

Managing the Server

The manager interface offers first a maintenance front page where the following options are provided. Starting and stopping the interface is done by running executables amos_start and amos_stop, respectively, under $(INSTALLATION_ROOT)/$(WEBDBINSTANCENAME)/admin (see file COMMON).

• System Status, which provides information about the dbserver status and statistics about the system usage.
• Inspect/Insert/Modify Data, provides an interface to operate on each table of the AMOS database.
• Modify Messages and Text Settings, provides a list with all the system messages and the text settings and allows the system administrator to edit them.
• Create/Destroy Tables, allows the system administrator to create new satellite tables (those different form Dictionary, Software_Description_Request, and Software_Description_Validation) or destroy any of those already existing.
• Edit Tables Types, allows the system administrator to edit the type of any field of a satellite table or to add or delete them.
• Reload Templates and Update DB Types. Once the configuration files have been changed, this option reloads them and updates the system with the new configuration.