Progress
Results Administration
and Development Guide


User Management

User IDs let you manage user activities and provide services to users in Results. A user ID is a unique identifier assigned to a system user when the user logs onto the system. Most user IDs have an associated password.

Results uses user IDs to create and maintain query directories that store information about the queries that a user creates in Results. The following sections describe user IDs and how Results uses them to create and maintain query directories.

User IDs

User IDs can originate from a variety of sources. Many operating systems support and establish user IDs for system users. On most operating systems, Results can use the operating system user ID as an identifier for a Results user. For more information about user IDs, consult the system administration documentation for your operating system.

To create portable user IDs and passwords in a Progress database, choose Admin Security Edit User List in the Data Administration tool. A Progress user ID for a user overrides any existing operating system user ID for the user. The user ID definitions must exist in the first database connected for a Progress session. Once a Progress database contains a user definition, an application cannot connect to the database without specifying a valid user ID and password combination. By default, Progress prompts for a valid user ID and password when Results connects to a database that contains user definitions.

There are several other ways to specify a valid user ID and password combination when you connect to a Progress database. See the Progress Programming Handbook and the Progress Installation and Configuration Guide Version 9 for UNIX or Progress Installation and Configuration Guide Version 9 for Windows for more information about Progress user IDs and database connections.

If you are using an operating system that does not support user IDs and there are no defined Progress users in the connected Progress databases, your Results user ID is the “blank user ID.” As with any other user ID in Results, you can use feature security to restrict the access of the blank user ID to Results functionality.

Query Directories

A query directory is a file that contains up to 256 query definitions for use by one or more Results users. A query definition consists of the query name and the name of the databases accessed by the query. All query directory files (QD7 files) have a QD7 file extension.

Results automatically creates a query directory for each user. The QD7 file for a user stores the queries created by that user. Results creates a QD7 file for a user when the user starts Results and there is no QD7 file for that user available in the PROPATH or current working directory. The user query directory files are for only one user; they are not multi-user files. The name of a QD7 file for a user takes the form userid.qd7. For users who log into Results as the blank user ID, Results creates a generic QD7 file called results.qd7. For more information about user IDs, see the "User IDs" section in this chapter.

The public QD7 file serves as a storage place for queries shared by a number of Results users. The name of the public query directory is public.qd7, and this name is stored in the current QC7 file associated with the primary application database. There can be only one public QD7 file per QC7 file.

By default, Results creates the public QD7 files in the current working directory. Once Results creates a QD7 file, you can move it anywhere in the PROPATH.

Results works with one query directory file at a time. When the user chooses Query Save, Results writes the current query to the current QD7 file. A user can open a query from another query directory by choosing Query Open or save the current query into another query directory by choosing Query Save As. These operations close a previously active query directory and make the query directory specified in the operation the current query directory in Results.

You can control access to the public query directory and other user query directories by setting feature security permissions on the ReadPublicDirectory, ReadOtherDirectory, WritePublicDirectory, and WriteOtherDirectory features. See the "Query Directory Security" section for more information about restricting access to user query directories.


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