Enhancing Logons with SECURITY/3000
-----------------------------------

Logging on the trusty old 3000 is so uninteresting compared to the booting
up of a PC. PC users have the advantage of inserting commands into their
AUTOEXEC files to display system information such as memory usage and disk
space availability. Even utilities can be run informing you of meetings or
display a proverb or famous quote during the startup.

Why let PC users have all the fun?

Although displaying system information to your user would be pointless we do
have a variety of different commands and utilities to replace the monotony
of logging in.

With the help of MPEX, SECURITY and this article, I will help you enhance
your logon sequence to implement some of the weird and wonderful things we
run during logon time.

SECURITY/3000 customers have a keyword called $LOGON-EXECUTE. This keyword
enables them to execute a command during logon time and assign that command
to a user set. People without SECURITY/3000 can implement the command files
using an OPTION LOGON UDC

LOGON DETAILS

Logon time is a great time for displaying information to users.
SECURITY/3000 users can display information relating to the date, time and
ldev that particular logon was last used. To accomplish this add these lines
into your SECURCON.DATA.VESOFT file:-

$LOGON-EXECUTE
  WRITELN("Last logon:",LASTLOGONDATE," at ",LASTLOGONTIME," on LDEV ",
 ,LASTLOGONLDEV) ONLINE

For each logon to your machine the logging in user would see something
like:-

     Last logon : 05 APR 95 at 08:15 AM on LDEV 110

CALENDAR

MPEXs calendar command is ideal for execution at logon time. As the name
implies this command will display a calendar month along with important
dates and todays date highlighted. To implement an MPEX command into a
$LOGON-EXECUTE we would do :-

$LOGON-EXECUTE
 MPE("%CALENDAR");
 ONLINE

The above logon execute calls the VESOFT function MPE. This is then used to
execute an MPEX command, differentiated from an MPE command by the %
prefix. The important dates are kept in the HOLID{month num} files located
in .DATA.VESOFT. These can be modified to include bank holidays or
birthdays.

QUOTE GENERATOR

A quote generator was one of the first things that we implemented into our
logon sequence. The fun was reading a quote that somebody else had added
into the file. The QUOTEGEN command is very simple to create if you have
MPEX just enter the following lines and keep them as QUOTEGEN:-

SETLVAR QUOTEFILE "QUOTES.GSL.VECSL"
SETLVAR NUM RANDOM(VEFINFO(QUOTEFILE).EOF)
ECHO Quote for today is:
ECHO
ECHO ![VEFREADDIR("!QUOTEFILE,OLD",NUM)]

The second file is our QUOTES file that contains any quotes, proverbs etc
that you wish to add. An example file is included in the .GSL.VECSL
contributed library for your use.

The QUOTEGEN command simply uses the MPEX function RANDOM to pick a number
from 0 to the EOF of the file QUOTES -1. The RANDOM function is also very
useful for getting lottery numbers, the contributed command
LOTTERY.GSL.VECSL does just that!

To execute the command file at logon time enter the following lines into
your SECURCON.DATA.VESOFT file:-

$LOGON-EXECUTE
 MPE("%QUOTEGEN");
 ONLINE

Again using the MPE function we call the MPEX command file %QUOTEGEN. Now
whenever a logon occurs, they will be greeted with a random quote. There
are some 126 quotes currently in the quote file!!


MEMORY JOGGER

The idea of a jogger is to display messages for up and coming events,
reminders, memos, etc that are personal to you. The JOGGER command file
(fig. 1) accepts 3 commands : ADD, CLEAR and VIEW.

ADD - When an ADD is passed to JOGGER you are prompted to enter a date and
message to be displayed at that date. This information along with your
session name is written out to a data file containing all JOGGER’s
reminders.

CLEAR - When a CLEAR is passed to JOGGER, JOGGER reads its data file looking
for all dates that are equal to or greater than todays date. These are
copied to a temporary file and then used to replace the existing data file.
The outcome of this is all old messages are removed.

VIEW - When a VIEW is passed to JOGGER, JOGGER prints its data file
displaying a ny records that contain your session name and todays date.
JOGGER VIEW is what will be executed at logon time.

JOGGER reads and writes to the file JOGDATA, which is built by doing :

BUILD JOGDATA;REC=-56,,F,ASCII;NOCCTL

This JOGDATA data file is structured as follows :-

DATE (YY/MM/DD format)  0:8
SESSION NAME            8:8
MESSAGE                 16:40

A sample JOGDATA would be:-

95/05/01ADE     Start production of GSNEWS 6
95/04/27PETER   Site visit in London.  Phone for confirmation.
95/06/20PAM     Training day tomorrow.  Get food.
95/05/18LEE     Confirm dentist appointment tomorrow

The memory jogger system displays any memos, todos or reminders during the
logon procedure in the same fashion as the QUOTEGEN command. Because of this
we have combined the two commands into one $LOGON-EXECUTE e.g

$LOGON-EXECUTE
 BEGIN &
  MPE ("%JOGGER");&
  MPE ("%QUOTEGEN");&
  MPE ("%PAUSE 3");&
 END;
 ONLINE

The BEGIN...END construct allows us to do more than one line during a
$LOGON-EXECUTE. Note that each line with the BEGIN..END MUST end with a
";&"

Once the users have logged on, they are greeted with a SECURITY/3000 menu.
In our menus a user has options to take them into an additional sub menu
where they can add, delete or view any memory joggers they wish. This sub
menu along with some graphical template menus and a VEMAIL sub menu are
included in the GSLMENU.VECSL contributed library

To clear up the JOGDATA file we have a simple job that is scheduled to log
on every Friday using STREAMX/3000. The JCL is submitted to the scheduler
with the line :-

STREAM JOGLEAR.JCL.SYS;REPEAT=FRI;AT=23:00

The JCL of JOGCLEAR simply consists of :-

!JOB JOGCLEAR,MANAGER.SYS
!RUN MAIN.PUB.VESOFT,MPEX;PARM=1
JOGGER CLEAR
BYE
!EOJ

Shipped in the current GSL contributed library along with a vast number of
other files are an enhanced JOGGER command that includes full scheduling
capabilities , LOTTERY, QUOTEGEN, VEMAIL and STD. VEMAIL is the Inter
Company Communication program and STD is a complete $STDLIST checking and
management system. Both VEMAIL and STD were written in MPEX and will be
discussed in future GSNEWs. All these files are of course error checked with
an added bonus of no additional keying in.

You may ask yourself, why add these at logon time to increase the time that
it takes you log on. The ironic thing is, because something is happening
that could be relevant to you, the extra time taken to log on is not
noticed!!