To look at the OSDB, ensure that you have already run the command
print,fix_zdbase(/eis)
to instruct the planning tool to read from the OSDB. To look at your personal database instead (where you keep studies that you're designing) just replace /eis with /user in the above line.
Below is an example of the widget that appears in SolarSoft when you type eis_xstudy:
At the top of this widget there are two black triangular arrows. These can be used to reduce (down arrow) or increase (up arrow) the number of lines shown in the study list. (This can be especially useful if your screen is a lot smaller than the default widget size.) This looks like so:
There's also a button at the top of the widget marked View/Edit Study Description. I'll come back to that in a while.
The volume here is probably one of the most important factors, since it determines how many times (if any!) a study can be run during an OP Period — see SbandObservingInfo for what this means in practice.
To read the study description in full, either scroll down this panel with the scroll bar, or go the the button at the top marked View/Edit Study Description (I told you I'd come back to it). This opens up a window like this:
As you can see, the study contains information for the person using this study, if it is to be used for the original proposal.
There is also often information in the study description added by the study validator, the person who tests the study on the EIS demonstration model at MSSL, before it enters the OSDB. This information can include things like warnings — e.g., information about how not to use the study — and so on.
To get rid of this window, just click on Quit.
Below the Study Description panel, you can search on one or more fields, namely Acronym (the name of the study), Title (confusingly, a description of the study), or Author (self-explanatory). Since I've mentioned George Doschek, let's try a search for studies he's designed. I don't know any other Doscheks on the EIS team, so I'll just use his surname:
You can see that this results in four studies showing up, each of which was authored by someone called Doschek.
You can clear the search fields by clicking Clear on the right-hand side.
Changing the Study Type drop-down list on the right from Science & Engineering to Science excludes all engineering-type studies from our search (although this tends to be more useful when looking for specifice engineerings studies hidden amongst the forest of science studies).
Below the search area is the Raster panel, where you can start to look at the details of the study's execution. Let's take another example to look at this.
For the purposes of this example, my memory's a bit shaky, so I just remember that the study I'm interested in has the letters CH in the name (acronym). Searching for these letters in the Acronym field produces these results: