Now that Christmas approaches, its time to get back into the swing of ImageInvoker. Normally I'd just get on with it, and throw out a couple of blogs and comments as I progress. This time however, I thought I'd try a different approach and write some articles as I go. The idea being that this approach might,

1. Provide others the opportunity to provide input into the development cycle. 
2. Generally enlighten as to how DS and ImageInvoker works. 

Background

1. Going forward, DS7 isn't really suited to the federated library model that exists in the DS6 branch.
2. Our primary entry point for provisioning computers is no longer the console
3. Significant console performance improvements with respect to security have been made in the 6.9 branch

All this means governing our estate from a single Deployment Server on the DS6 branch becomes feasible, and if ImageInvoker changes too it might even become practical. This should hopefully put us in good stead for the eventual move to DS7.
 

Where ImageInvoker needs to go

Authentication

Menu Generation

First Step -Moving away from the Flat Menu Structure

I've been mulling over the job logic over the past month whilst on the Hampton Beta program, and I've got a direction in mind now. Currently, if I had on my Deployment Server the following Menu-Item tagged job folders,

• Deploy Server 2003 x64 (MI)
• Deploy Server 2003 x86 (MI)
• Deploy Win7 Public Access Computer (MI)
• Deploy Win7 Staff Computer (MI)
• Deploy XP Public Access Computer (MI)
• Deploy XP Staff Computer (MI)

No matter how buried these are in folder and sub-folder hierachies, they might as well be flat as the resulting menu is flat,

This is fine when you don't have many Menu-Item tagged jobs and job folders. It gets to be a bit of a pain though when you have a fair few of these. An obvious way to create a navigable menu within the ImageInvoker client is to have this mirror how the client jobs prepared in a tree on the server.

However, it might not make much sense though to navigate the entire console job tree when locating your jobs in the client. Further, the filing structure used by your image gurus may not mean very much to the helpdesk crew on the ground. So, to give the flexibility of a human-readable navigation structure then, we need to create a root. Let's call that root folder ImageInvoker.

In that case, we rearrange the above Windows OS deployment folders as follows, which would give (with artistic license) a Client menu as follows,

For those that  prefer a flat structure, you could always throw the Menu Item tagged jobs directly into the ImageInvoker folder, without the subfolder divisions.

Next, we'll need some SQL to enumerate this folder structure. Thinking out load, I need to,

1. Enumerate first all jobs under the ImageInvoker folder, storing the job id and the parent folder id (where MI in string)
2. Enumerate all folders under the ImageInvoker folder, storing all folder ids and parent_folder id (where MI in string or not)

First port of call is to identify the Folder ID of the ImageInvoker folder. This is satisfied by the following T-SQL,

 Declare @RootFolderID int

set @RootFolderID = (select top 1 folder_id 
from event_folder 
where name ='ImageInvoker' and parent_id Is Null)

select @RootFolderID 

 Declare @RootFolderID int

set @RootFolderID = (select top 1 folder_id from event_folder where name ='ImageInvoker' and parent_id Is Null)

select @RootFolderID


/* Find (MI) tagged jobs under ImageInvoker folder */
select name, event_id,folder_id from event 
where dbo.Custom_IsEventWithinFolder(event_id,@RootFolderID)=1
and name like '%(MI)%'


/* Find all folders under ImageInvoker folder */
select name, folder_id,parent_id from event_folder 
where dbo.Custom_IsFolderWithinFolder(folder_id,@RootFolderID)=1 

1. All menu tagged jobs with a folder ID of @RootFolderID
2. All menu tagged folders with a folder ID of @RootFolderID (these being 'executable')
3. All folders not menu tagged with a folder ID of @RootFolderID (these being 'navigable') 

And the T-SQL for that will be something like,

 Declare @RootFolderID int

set @RootFolderID = (select top 1 folder_id from event_folder where name ='ImageInvoker' and parent_id Is Null)

select @RootFolderID


/* Find tagged jobs in ImageInvoker folder */
select name, event_id,folder_id from event 
where folder_id=@RootFolderID
and name like '%(MI)%'


/* Find tagged folders in ImageInvoker folder */
select name, folder_id,parent_id from event_folder 
where parent_id=@RootFolderID
and name like '%(MI)%'


/* Find navigable folders in ImageInvoker folder */
select name, folder_id,parent_id from event_folder 
where parent_id=@RootFolderID
and name not like '%(MI)%'