User guide

36 CHAPTER 3: DEVICE WINDOW
Key Concepts This section describes the 3Com Network Administrator key concepts
relating to the device window.
Inventory Files 3Com Network Administrator stores device information in inventory files.
Inventory files have the file extension ‘
.inv'. They are exclusive to 3Com
Network Administrator and are not related to HP OpenView.
Only one inventory file may be open at any one time. Opening a new
inventory file will close the current inventory file.
All operations invoked from 3Com Network Administrator are applied to
the current inventory file. For example, importing data from either HP
OpenView or a CSV file results in the current inventory file being updated
with the newly gathered information. 3Com Network Administrator does
not alter the CSV files or HP OpenView maps it imports device
information from.
Two other types of files are saved alongside inventory files. These files use
the same name as the inventory file but have
.mdb and .properties file
extensions. These files are used internally by 3Com Network
Administrator. Whilst the presence of these files is not required to
successfully load an inventory file, some user-defined options may not be
set if they are not present.
Device Groups Device Groups are displayed on the left side of the device window.
There are two main groups in the Device Group Tree:
■ All 3Com Devices
■ Standard Groups
3Com Network Administrator for HP OpenView.book Page 36 Wednesday, November 12, 2003 2:33 PM