The %ctDB meta command enables you to directly update a field in a table in the CatTools database as part of an activity.
Syntax
%ctDB:tablename:fieldname:new field value
The tablename is the name of the table in the database you wish to update a field in.
The fieldname is the name of the field you wish to update. See the Device Table section for a list of fields.
The new field value is the content you wish to place into the database field. This value may contain a colon - : - in the content as the command parser only looks for the first 3 colons as separators.
For instance, you may wish to change the password for devices on the remote authentication server. This would be done on the server itself, and CatTools would not be aware that the password has changed. You can set up an Enter Command activity with a meta command that will change the password in the CatTools database for the selected devices. The command would look like:
%ctDB:Device:AAAPassword:thenewpassword
In this case, you need to enter only the one meta command as the commands for the Enter Command activity. When the activity runs, it sets the AAAPassword field of the Device table to "thenewpassword" for all the selected devices. CatTools would then use this new password whenever it needed to login to one of the devices.
You might also use this type of command if you were setting up the local username and password properties on a set of devices. You would place the meta commands to update the CatTools database fields after the device commands that set the properties on the devices. It is recommended that you select the option to Stop on error in this situation to ensure that CatTools does not have a field set if the device command does not complete successfully.
In a Modify Config activity you might enter the command
username joe password fred ...
to set a local username and password. You could the use meta commands to update the CatTools database to reflect these changes:
%ctDB:Device:AAAUsername:joe
%ctDB:Device:AAAPassword:fred
CatTools then knows to use these values when logging into the device in future.