In the node group edit form you can create and edit your node groups. Node groups are used to group nodes together in tools as the command job scheduler, relationship test, etc. The form consists out of three parts.

Node groups contains all node groups defined in netYCE. A node group has a number of attributes:

• Group_name: the name of this node group. This needs to be unique.
• Group_description: a description of this node group.
• Group_tag: a tag that can be used to group node groups together. A group can only have one tag.
• Group_scope: either all, cmdb or yce. Whether this node group should apply to all nodes, or just the ones in the cmdb or the yce databases. You cannot switch between cmdb or yce.

The form has a number of buttons. This is their function:

• The new-button opens a form in which you can add a new node group by specifying a name and a tag. If you specify a name that already exists, a windows-like addition is made to make it unique (for example, 'Node_group' becomes 'Node_group (1)', and the next time you try to add a group with that name it becomes 'Node_group (2)'.
• The duplicate button duplicates a node group immediately, which you can then afterwards edit in these forms. The Group_name attribute is changed as described above.
• The edit button allows you to edit the different attributes of the node group. Note that you can only edit the group's scope if it is either 'cmdb' or 'all'. Once a node group has the scope of 'yce', you can not switch it back. This is because of the unique attributes you can assign to 'yce' node group conditions which would cause conflicts when you edit them back to a 'cmdb' node group.
• The delete button allows you to delete a node group. This is permanent, so there is no way to reverse.
• The import button allows you to import a previously exported node group and its rules and conditions. This works in the same way as when importing Service types, Domains and Regions.
• The export button allows you to export a node group. This is saved as an xml file and it works the same way as when exporting Service types, Domains and Regions.
• The search button allows you to search through this particular grid. The search is persistent, so if you switch screens, it will remember your search.

Node group rules are collections of criteria on which you can group nodes together. There are two types of rules: include and exclude. The include rules create a collection of nodes that validate all of their conditions, and the exclude rules remove nodes from this collection that validate any of their conditions.

• Group_name: the name of the node group
• Type: is the type of the type of the node group rule, so either include or exclude. All include rules are listed before the exclude rules, apart from that order does not matter.
• Index: is the index to keep track of the rules. This value is purely cosmetic and has no practical purpose.
• Attributes: a list of the attributes of the conditions of this rule
• Values: a list of the values of the conditions of this rule, where each line corresponds to its respective line in the Attributes-column.

The form has a number of buttons. This is their function:

• The new-button opens a form in which you can add a new node group rule by specifying its type.
• The delete button allows you to delete a node group rule. This is permanent, so there is no way to reverse.

A Node group rule has zero or many conditions. Node group conditions define which filters to look for when grouping nodes together. Each condition looks at an attribute (which can be a client code, hostname, domain), and filters all node based on user-defined criteria. It has these attributes:

• Group_cond_attr: the attribute on which to filter. The different possible attributes that you can select depends on the scope of the condition's node group. If the scope is 'yce', you can select significantly more different attributes based on netYCE's database than if the scope is 'cmdb' or 'all'.
• Group_cond_value: the filters and criteria of the condition. More on its syntax below. Note that upon saving, all empty lines and leading and trailing spaces are removed.

A node group condition needs to have an attribute. At the moment the form does allow this, but note that these conditions will not work when the node group is applied. Upon saving and loading the form, any condition that does not have an attribute and value (both) is removed and cleaned up.

The Group_cond_value of a node group condition matches nodes based on a number of lines. A node that matches any of these lines is matched. A line can be plaintext, in which it has to be matched exactly, or can contain any special characters:

• * matches any sequence of characters