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Watchdog.exe (Popularity: 8386 )
10yearCPA
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Show the link to this post Watchdog.exe
12/13/06 at 02:01:31
 
The Ecco Watchdog FAQ.
 
Version 1.0
 
4 February 2001
 
Author: Nick Gordon (nickg@mantech.co.uk)
 
This FAQ deals with the use and interpretation of Watchdog. Because Watchdog is undocumented and unsupported, I have had to assmeble this information from newsgroup and email exchanges with people who have taken the time and trouble to try and figure it out. Than you all, wherever you are.
 
The information here is provided without warranty, express or implied. Although I am pretty sure it's accurate, I cannot be responsible for any probalem that might aris from your using it. However, I think and hope it will be useful to Ecco users. Errors are mine; feedback is welcome, especially on ways to make it clearer and more understandable.
 
 
What is Watchdog?
 
Watchdog is a small utility that was originally written for internal use only by Ecco software engineers, to help with problem diagnosis. Its basic purpose is to provide information about the number of items and folder assignments in an Ecco date (.eco) file.
 
With company permission, it was provided to the Netmanage Ecco newsgroups 2 or 3 years ago, on an "as is" basis; that is, unwarranted, undocumented and unsupported. It is free for use on that understanding.
 
Watchdog consists of a single .exe file about 18K in size.
 
2. Where can I get it?
 
Ask in the Ecco mailing list group, and someone will volunteer to send it to you. Or email me direct, and I will send it to you.  
 
It is also available, at present anyway, at the Ecco Basics website at http://www.scaevola.com/eccobasics/
 
3. Why isn't it available in the files area for the Ecco egroup?
 
Because the files area is limited in size, and the heavily requested Easy Ecco back issues take up all the space.
 
4. How do I run it?
 
Open the Ecco data file you're interested in, and then just double-click the Watchdog executable. You'll get a window with some numbers in it.
 
5. I've run it; now how do I get rid of it?
 
CTRL-ALT-DEL, and then select Watchdog and hit End Task. Elegant, huh? I told it was written for *internal* use.
 
6. What are all the numbers and what do they mean?
 
You would ask that, wouldn't you.
 
Like I said, Watchdog was never documented, so what's here has been assembled from previous discussions in the newsgroups and on the mailing list, and from other people's work in experimenting, guessing, analysing and sharing their conclusions.
 
The top 4 lines (the bar charts) are indicators of use of Windows system resources. If you don't know what these are, any decent Windows text should tell you. Suffice it to say here that they show the percentage of total resources available to Windows in use on your system at the present time. They do not tell you anything about Ecco.
 
It's the seven lines below this that are the interesting ones. Each represents a different measure of items in your .eco file.
 
Each line has the following format:
 
<Type of item>: <number of these items>  >>  <memory in bytes used by that number of items>
 
The item types are as follows:
 
RT - the Runtime zone. This represents a kind of scratchpad for items in use. These items are not persistent; when you close your Ecco file they are lost.
 
MIS - the Miscellaneous zone. This is where folder values associated with items are stored. This data is persistent.
 
VOU - View Outline Units. This is the number of Items (see below) that are in Notepads (which used to be called Views). Items not in Notepads are not shown here.
 
FLD - The number of Folders in the file. There is a small number of hidden folders, so counting the folders in your file will give a number half-a-dozen less than this. I surmise that the hidden folders are used for things like the Run Time zone, for the Ecco synchronisation mechanism, and for other administrative and control activity.
 
IOU - Item Outline Units (I think). The number of items in your file, whether in a view or not. See below for what an Item is.
 
PTB - Obsolete, and not used
 
VW - the number of Notepads (Views) in the file.
 
7. So what's it all about then?
 
Ah, if we only knew. Better men than me have been asking that question for as long as there's been a human race, and we're still no nearer an answer. Oh, you mean what does it mean for your .eco file. Okay.
 
First, a definition. An Item in Ecco is a line with a bullet next to it - a Top Level Item (TLI) to be precise. Sub-items (Sub Level Items - SLIs) are not considered items for the purposes of the counts.
 
The Ecco internal file structure has some limits. They're described in more detail in the Ecco File Limits FAQ, posted separately.
 
The ones we're interested in here are as follows:
 
The number of items in the file (Watchdog's IOU value) must not exceed 64K
The number of items in Notepads (Watchdog's VOU value) must not exceed 64K
 
If EITHER exceeds 64K, you'll get the out of memory error.
 
In addition, I believe that you need to subtract the RT value from the 64K limit. I haven't tested it, but I suspect that the RT value might count against VOUs. In any case, if you're so close to the 64K limit that RT has an effect, you need to trim the file.
 
 
.. see next post..
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10yearCPA
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I Love Ecco!

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Show the link to this post Watchdog (part 2)
Reply #1 - 12/13/06 at 02:03:00
 
...continued from previous post...
 
 
So far, so clear (I hope).
 
However, you need to be aware of a couple of things.  
 
If you open a folder in the Scratch view, you will increase the VOU value (more items in views, see?).  
 
Also, if you use Edit, Find to collect results in the Search Results views, VOUs will increase by the number of items in Search Results. This might be very significant, because many people use a Find with nothi
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