OSI/FTAM Programming Guide

ISO FTAM Concepts
HP NonStop OSI/FTAM Programming Guide—528612-001
2-38
File Attributes
Negotiating File Attributes
File-attribute groups are negotiated when an FTAM association is established. On the
F-INITIALIZE request primitive, the attribute-groups parameter proposes a list of
the optional attribute groups (storage, security, or private) that you want available for
the association. A remote responder can reduce the list to what it can support; it
cannot add to the list you propose. When attribute groups have been negotiated, you
can use the attributes from those groups along with the associated protocol. Attributes
in non-negotiated groups are not available during the association.
Once you negotiate a set of attribute groups, a responder must either fully or partially
support every file attribute in each negotiated group. You can refer to a supported
attribute or modify the attribute. An initiator fully supports all attributes of a supported
group. A responder, on the other hand, might only partially support some of the
attributes in a supported group, where partially supported file attribute means that the
responder recognizes the attribute name as valid, but provides no value for it. When a
responder partially supports an attribute, if an initiator makes a request involving that
attribute, the responder responds that no value is available, and any attempt to change
the attribute fails.
The OSI/FTAM Programming Reference Manual indicates what attributes the NonStop
initiator supports. The OSI/FTAM Responder Manual indicates what attributes the
NonStop responder supports.
Table 2-14 on page 2-39 lists the FTAM file attributes and indicates whether you can
use FTAM primitives to initialize or change these attributes, or both. In the cases in
which you cannot initialize a file attribute, the responder performs this function
internally. The next few subsections describe each attribute. Much of the information
for these file attribute descriptions is found in ISO 8571-2, clause 3.12.
Kernel Group Attributes
The kernel group attributes are always defined and available for any file in an ISO
conformant virtual filestore. These attributes are as follows:
Filename.The filename attribute contains the name of the file. It consists of one or
more character strings. The form of the name is implementation-dependent; NonStop
FTAM, for example, uses one character string for the names of files. The value of the
filename attribute is set at file creation and can be changed by the change-attribute
service.
Permitted-actions. The permitted-actions attribute specifies the actions a remote user
can perform on a file, as well as the FADU-identity groups (traversal, reverse traversal,
and random order) that a responder can use to access the file. A remote user can
request only those file actions that are included in the permitted-actions attribute. The
responder implements this set of permitted actions in any way that allows it to map the
permitted actions onto the underlying real system. The available file-access actions
include:
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