Network Mapping on command line on Windows

Mapping a network drive on windows is very easy using UI tools. It goes this way…

1. Open Windows explorer
2. Go to Tools – Map Network Drive
3. On new window select a letter as Mapped Network Drive (e.g. P: )
4.  Select a network folder by browsing or just paste network path (e.g. \\hostname\FolderName) and click on Finish

Now you can see a new Drive in your explorer. But what if you want map a drive through a batch script? Yeah, you need to know a command to map network drive from command line. It goes this way.

To map a network drive from command line you need 2 inputs same as above.

1. Drive Name (e.g. P: )
2. Network Path (e.g. \\hostname\FolderName)

Now follow the steps below

1. Go to run and type cmd
2. On command line enter the following command

• subst \\hostname\FolderName P:

This will map your network drive. Now to make sure that you have mapped it correctly, type drive name and hit enter. E.g. P: hit enter. Now user dir command to list all directories and files. You can also go to explorer and check that new drive is available.

– Ashish Kulkarni

DB2 Concepts and Enovia V6 Installation on AIX

Enovia V6 installation on AIX with DB2 was always a problem for us to maintain various environments. We always used single instance and single database. Moreover Application Server, Web Server and Database Server were on same hardware.

This time database server was different. Somehow db was moved to other server without consulting environment owner. Hence our environment was directly affected. We tried to move some parameters by changing few paths in environment and installation files. But it did not work. We made sure that we have a db2 client installed on our application server. But all efforts were unsuccessful.

Finally we concluded that if instance is moved or renamed will not work for current environment and new installation is required. So we decided to for a new installation. Following was our plan which was successful for installation. Deployment is pending.

1. We used existing instance (e.g. INST1)
2. We used existing db user (e.g. dbuser)
3. Now we created 2 different databases on DB Server. (e.g db1 and db2)
4. Next task was to configure client to access these 2 databases. Hence we created one more instance on client (dbuser, yes we kept name same as server db user). Our client has same user name for db user as dbuser on server.
5. We cataloged dbs on client instance as db1db for db1 and db2db for db2.

Rest all was easy to do. When we install Enovia V6 on AIX using DB2 as database system we need 2 parameters. Following are the details.

1. Database Instance name on which we catalog our database. In our case this name is dbuser (Do not get confused. J This is instance name on client with same name for database user. ) This is required while installing Studio as well as Server.
2. Catalog Name as connection string which is used to generate Bootstrap file (e.g. MATRIX-R)

Rest of the Enovia installation is almost same as on windows. On 2012, DS has provided GUI for installation which is a great help for administrators. Yes, there are few annoying things like installer always refers to default path and does not consider your custom paths even if you provide at the start of installation.

This was a good learning for us when installing Enovia V6 2012 on AIX with DB 9.7.

If you have any queries, please ping me.

-Ashish Kulkarni