Wasn’t There an Option for Html?
I might have said there was at some time, but it was a white lie. What you can do is to convert the XML file into a Html document. It’s quite easy and it’s used in this way:
cscript.exe sydi-transform.vbs -xServer.xml -sServerhtml.xsl -oServer.html
Running this script will require that Server.xml and Serverhtml.xsl and sydi-html-stylex.xsl are located in the same directory. If you have created private xsl files you can use the sydi-transform to convert it.
Hey, Wasn’t This about Documentation?
It sure was, most of what we’ve looked at up until now has been more geared against Inventory instead of Network Documentation. I saved the best for last, a new tool in sydi-server 2.0 is the ss-xml2word.vbs script (or SYDI-Server XML to Word).
What the script does is that it takes an XML file and converts it to a Word document. You might be thinking that SYDI already wrote to Word, which is true, however there are situations where that isn’t possible. For example in environments where you don’t have Word installed, may it be in a DMZ or as a scheduled task on a server.
The good part though is the options you specify when creating the Word document. To view these options run:
cscript.exe ss-xml2word.vbs -h
Here you can see that there are two arguments that are required -x and -l.
cscript.exe ss-xml2word.vbs -xServer1.xml -llang_english.xml
This line will create a Word document based on the information in the Server1.xml file, it will then use the English language file which describes what it writes to the Word document. This means that you can have the documentation in your native language. When I released SYDI-Server 2.0 there was support for English and Swedish. Later people have contributed with there own language files which you can download; Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese and Dutch.
One issue that causes the ss-xml2word.vbs script to fail for many people is a path problem. If you run the script and it just writes out a few pages without any information from the xml file and the script crashes, this is happening to you. Either put all the files in the same directory or specify the path after -x -l or -s. I will fix this in future versions so the error message is a bit more user-friendly.
The most exciting feature as I see it is the optional -s argument. This is the reason I created SYDI in the first place. The -s option specifies an XML file which contains the written documentation about the server. That is the documentation you have created, this differs from the data that SYDI-Server has gathered from the machine.
Let’s take it for a spin.
Writing Your Documentation
To get you started I’ve included three files in the Examples directory (of sydi-server), copy the howto.xml and rename it to Server1_docs.xml. This will be where you will write the documentation. Open the Server1_docs.xml file in Notepad. Scrolling up and down you will see different XML tags. You’ll recognize the sections and subsections from the Word documents previously created.
Inside the sections and subsections you will se prenotes and postnotes, inside these there are a few tags. The only thing you have to do in this file is to create and edit tags. Scroll down to the section called toc (Tables of Contents), here you will se the difference between prenotes and postnotes. It has to do where they appear in the final document. Just run a few tests and you’ll se what I mean. So let’s start to document.
In the system info section change this:
In this version you are only able to use text tags, more could be availible in later versions of SYDI.To:
Physical Location: Server Room in Stockholm
System Owner: BOFH
Support Agreement: 3Y Next Business Day (Expires 2007-10-16)
Save the file and create the final document.
cscript.exe ss-xml2word.vbs -xServer1.xml -llang_english.xml -sServer1_docs.xml
The above was just an example, you are of course free to write and include whatever you want in the documentation. If you fail to create the documents it’s good to know that XML parsers are very unforgiving if there’s an error in any of the files. Make sure all tags are closed correctly by opening them in a browser. If you fail to open Server1_docs.xml in a browser the problem is there. Fix it and try again.
I’ve also created a batch file, writedoc.cmd which looks like this:
cscript tools\ss-xml2word.vbs -x\\serverr\net$\sydi\output\%1.xml -llanguage\lang_english.xml -s\\server\itsupport$\documentation-source\%1-written.xml -o\\server\itsupport$\documentation-binder\Server-%1.doc -d -b”Table Contemporary”
I use it by running
Writedoc.cmd Servername
So there you have it, that’s how I use SYDI-Server. If you have any questions just post a comment or contact me.
[tags]network documentation, server documentation, sydi, how to, tutorial[/tags]