describe Command

Description

Provides the author, description, help URL, icon file, keywords and version of the specified object.

Command Syntax

describe <path>/<component> [-xml]

"d" can also be used as short-hand for "describe".

Example

The following commands...

>describe Circle
>d Circle

...produce the following Analysis Server response:

Version: unknown
Author: unknown
hasIcon: false
Description: unknown 
Help URL: unknown
Keywords:
Driver: false

The values above are the defaults. If the author does not provide this information in the component specification, the description will appear as written. The hasIcon field is an aid for programs that represent Analysis Server components as graphical entities; they can retrieve the icon, if one is available, and display it in a GUI.

When an author includes the information above in the component, the author's information replaces the defaults. For example, if an author built another circle component, the output of the describe command might look like this:

>d Special_Circle 
Version: 1.1.2a
Author: Montgomery Smith
hasIcon: true
Description: computes area, perimeter of a circle
helpURL: www.smith.com\circle 
Keywords: circle, area, perimeter
Driver: false

The description above shows why the describe command is valuable: it may be uncertain from the name of a component what it does.

If the user wants a description of a component inside a category structure, then the category and subcategories in the component's path must also be specified:

>d ~smith/Project1/Financials/BOM 
Version: unknown
Author: Montgomery Smith
hasIcon: true
Description: computes cost of a bill of materials.
helpURL: www.Carlos.com\~circle 
Keywords: BOM, cost 
Driver: false

In this situation, a user directory called "smith" has a public_aserver directory. This directory has a Project1/Financials category inside it that holds the component requested. The Analysis Server finds the component based upon the path provided by the user and provides the descriptive information requested.

You may also request this information in an XML format using the -xml option.

>d ~todd/Aero/WingStruct -xml
<Description>
 <Version>v5.2</Version>
 <Author>Todd Dott</Author>
 <Description>Structure of a wing</Description>
 <HelpURL></HelpURL>
 <Keywords></Keywords>
 <TimeStamp>Wed Apr 02 15:06:46 EST 2003</TimeStamp>
 <Checksum>1653837981</Checksum>
 <HasVersionInfo>false</HasVersionInfo>
</Description>

The returned information may optionally include all of the following fields. Clients should ignore any unknown fields in case new fields are added in the future.

Field	Description
Author	The author of the component
Checksum	A checksum of the component's main file which can be used to determine if a component has changed since the last time it was used. An addler CRC32 algorithm is used
Description	The component's description
Driver	If this component is a driver and contains reference variables, this will be set to "true"
hasIcon	If this component has an associated icon, this will be set to "true"
HasVersionInfo	If this component is under version control, this will be set to "true"
HelpURL	A URL which contains more help information about the component
Keywords	The component's keywords
Redirect	This component entry may just be a name server listing. The actual code resides at a different location. Although it is possible that using this component location may work (if the server is set up to proxy the connection), the client should preferrentially reconnect to the specified location.
TimeStamp	The file timestamp of the component's main file which can be used to determine if a component has changed. If a checksum is present, it is more reliable than this value.
Version	The component's vesrion as specified by the wrapper author unless this component is under version control. If the component is under version control, the "head" or most recent version available from the versioning system is presented here.