SOS ENGINE INTRODUCTION

Have you ever wondered exactly what your application was doing in
the background, what files it was accessing, how many bytes it was
reading or writing, or how other low level functions were being
performed?

We did.  In fact, the first version of this program was born a couple
of years ago out of desperation when we could not determine why one
of our applications would not print correctly when run on a network.
Since then we have saved countless hours during the develpment/alpha/
beta cycles.

We have also used this program to monitor our clients systems and to
record problems for later analysis.  The usefullness of this program
is limited only by your understanding of what it does.


                                OVERVIEW

The SOS ENGINE consists of two parts.  The first is the 'ENGINE' which
is an 11k memory resident module that can be loaded anywhere in memory.
The engine remains idle in memory until you activate it from your
application.  When activitated, it begins logging selected activities
to a pre-determined file.  Each log entry is time stamped, in 24 hour
time, with a resolution of 1/100th of a second.

The second part consists of a standard OBJ file that you link with
your application.  The OBJ file contains 18 functions written entirely
in assembly language, and adds less than 600 bytes to the size of your
finished application.  Each of the eighteen functions are designed to
help you tailor the output of the engine to suit your needs as closely
as possible.


                              APPLICATION

The SOS ENGINE can be used as a debugging tool during the development,
Alpha, and Beta cycles of application development and testing.
If desired, the code can be left in the application when it is
finished as it requires very little overhead.  The engine could be
distributed with the application and loaded only if needed.  This is
a great way to provide an un-paralleled level of support.

It can be extremely usefull for developers of vertical applications.
They could easily monitor the execution of their software all the time,
or at times when errors are likely to occur.  Log files can easily be
printed out and faxed or mailed to the developer, so he has exact
documentation as to what the application was doing when a problem
occurred.


                           SOS ENGINE REFERENCE

The SOS ENGINE consists of two very small modules:

SOSENGN.EXE -- This is the memory resident engine portion of the
program. It can be loaded any time you like prior to running an
application that activates it.  It can be loaded into 'HIGH' memory
without problem.

The engine needs no parameters, and will maintain a log file called
SOSENGN in the directory where the program was first called.
You can unload the engine from memory by using the /U command line
parameter. (i.e. SOSENGN /U)
You may also specify a file name by passing a fully qualified DOS file
name as a command line parameter. (i.e. SOSENGN C:\LOGS\MYLOG.DAT )



SOSFUNC.OBJ -- This is the 'LIBRARY' portion of the program.
This file contains 18 callable functions you may use to control the
output of the engine module.  It has been tested with Clipper, BASIC,
Turbo Pascal, and C, and should work with any dialect of those
languages.  It is written in 100% Assembler, with no language
particulars, so it should be pretty much generic.
Source code is provided.


                              Solid Oak Software
                                 P.O. Box 6826
                           Santa Barbara, CA 93160
                        805-967-9853  FAX 805-967-1614