Compaq Survey Utility Overview

System Requirements

This version of the Compaq Survey Utility has been tested on the following Compaq products:

The Compaq Survey Utility runs on the following operating systems:

Theory of Operation

The Compaq Survey Utility captures data as sessions. A session is defined as an organized group of data describing the configured state of the system at a specific point in time. The Compaq Survey Utility maintains up to 10 distinct sessions.

For Windows and Novell systems, the sessions are organized as three distinct types:

The Original session (referenced as session number 2) is the first session sampled. The Compaq Survey Utility will treat this session as a "master configuration" and the utility will never overwrite this session.

The Checkpoint sessions (referenced as session numbers 3 to 10) are the next 8 samples that differ significantly from the previous session. These sessions are maintained in a first in, first out (FIFO) fashion and may be deleted as newer Checkpoint sessions are added. The "significance" of a Checkpoint is determined programmatically based on the type of information captured. The utility only generates a Checkpoint when something that would not change under normal operation of the server is changed; therefore, not all items that change will generate Checkpoints.

The Active session (referenced as session number 1) is the most recent information captured. The utility overwrites this session each time a sample is taken.

NOTE:   When using Compaq Survey Utility from a browser, sessions will be listed by the date and time of the session rather than by the number of the session.

For Windows and Novell systems, the session information is maintained in a file called SURVEY.IDI, located in the same directory as the executable portion of the program. This file contains all of the information captured for every session in a highly compressed binary form. This file can be analyzed locally by the Survey Utility, or it can be sent to another location such as a help center or to Compaq where the Survey Utility can generate custom reports on the information.

For Linux systems the session information for each session is stored in an individual text file. The session information is maintained in a file called surveyCCYY-MM-DD-HH-mm-ss.txt (the double letters represent the date and time when survey was run) located in /var/compaq/survey/ directory.

Related Topics:

Installing Compaq Survey On a NetWare Server

Installing Compaq Survey Utility on Windows NT and Windows 2000

Using Compaq Survey from  a Browser