basic_concepts

================== Interface elements

• If it is an icon, then it is most likely a click-able action. Hover over it to get a small description of what that action might be or maybe some other information.
• Blue clickable links in a DNs name are the host portion of an FQDN. You can click on it to navigate to the display host page.
• Green clickable links in a DNS name are the Domain portion of an FQDN. You can click on it to navigate to the display domain page.
• Orange clickable links are action links that allow you to add or edit data in the system.
• Binocular icons will popup search boxes that allow you to find other data within the database that may be required for that particular input edit.
• In an edit dialog, the underlined titles are the required fields. non-underlined titles are optional fields.
• When searching, if only one record is found the search result window will minimize and you will be taken to the display page for that single record.
• In the top right of each record list box is a filter field. As you type in this box it will start to filter the existing list. The filter box should have a name of the column it will filter by. It can only filter on one column from the list. If there is not a name in the filter box, it will usually filter on the first column.
• Just about every row, column, and text in ONA has some sort of tooltip. Hover your mouse over things to find more information of various types.
• On display screens each of the information boxes can be minimized or maximized using the arrow button in the top right of the boxes title. They do not keep their minimized state and will show up maximized the next time you reach that display page.
• If you want to get back to the home page or ONA desktop simply close the current work space by clicking the small home icon in the top right of the work space window title, just below the trace bar.

Data hierarchy

The following is the basic order of things that must exist before the next item can be added.

1. DNS Domain First you will need a namespace or DNS domain to store the names of your hosts. The install process initializes the first domain for you.
2. Subnet An IP network is nothing without subnets to put hosts on. These are the things you configure on a router so that the devices down stream can talk to the rest of the world so it is fitting that you would add them as the first thing to the ONA database.
3. Host Now that you have a domain and some subnets, you will want to track various devices that are connected to your network. You will start by adding hosts to these subnets. The way you do that is by assigning an IP address (or interface). From a data perspective, you can not add an IP address to a subnet without a host and subnet to associate it with. When adding hosts you will actually provide a unique name within one of your domains and an IP address that is available on one of your existing subnets. You can provide other host level attributes like device type and MAC address as well.
4. Interface Now that we have hosts and subnets we can add interfaces. As mentioned in the host section, when adding a host you will be adding at least one interface for that host as well. Some hosts however have more than one IP address on them. You can add as many IP addresses as you wish to existing hosts as long as there is an existing subnet in the database that they would fall within. If you are adding a new IP make sure you are not creating a new host for that IP if it should really be added to an existing host.
5. DNS records Now that we have all of the above, we can start adding more DNS records if needed. A DNS record (depending on its type) requires existing IP addresses within the database. When adding a host, you will be prompted to add the first DNS A record (Primary DNS name). You can then add other DNS records to your hosts but be sure that the IP already exists on a host before you try to add that A record that would use it.