Interesting Feature with regard to Intouch and SQL Alarm logging

BillyB

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Aug 2006
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Hi,
Just thought I would bring this to your attention if your interested.

We have an Intouch system logging Alarm data to an SQL Laarm Database on a seperate Server.

we noticed recently that the last 3 months data was missing. the pc was restarted and the machine started loggin again. Luckily we also had INSQL configured which was acting as a continous historian, so we were able to query all alarms over the period.

I noticed that this had happened a few times in the past so I tried to identify the problem. I narrowed it down to the fact that the link was severed every time a particuler operator was logged in.
The particuler operators name was eg. " John O'Connor". This turned out to be very important.

In our system, everytime an alarm occurs the operator is required to enter his username ie. "oconnorj", password and a comment.

This username is then cross referenced with Active Directory and the operators Display Name as it appears in the Active Directory configuration is added to the Comment Table in the Alarm database.
No comments were ever recieved for this operator.

CAUSE:
Everytime this operator tried to log a comment to the database, Intouch was attempting to add his display name( John o'Connor) to a field in the comment Table. This field could not take an APOSTROPHE and Loggin failed immediatly.
Solution:
We have had to fire anybody who has an apostrophe in their name. :)

Anyway, anybody know how to put a watchdog alarm between INTOUCH node and SQL.
 
One of our historian alarms is low collection rate. I believe that the collection rate is a system tag in InSQL that InTouch can monitor.
 
Billy, which version of Intouch are you running? There were some problems with single quotation marks (apostrophe) used in the alarm logger fields. There are patches that took care of this problem in the older Intouch versions.
 
Thanks for your replies!

Oakley:
Our INSQL Tables were fine. We did not lose any data to the INSQL historian. We utilised this data to retrieve our alarms that were not logged to the Other Database (WWALMDB)
which is a specific Alarm and Events database. It lives on the same server as the INSQL Runtime Database.
Am I missunderstanding you? Are you suggesting a wathdog between the INSQL database and not the Alarm and Event Database???


DaveW:
Intouch ver 8.0
 
Make sure you have the latest service pack installed. I believe it's SP3. Monitoring InSQL won't help. I don't know what kind of errors you are getting and if the WWALMDB is disconnected from Intouch at all but if this is the case you can monitor the connection status using the .ConnectStatus for the alarm activex display.

Example:
Tagname = #AlmDbView1.ConnectStatus;
(Where the name of the control is AlmDbView1 and tagname is defined as a Message tagname).
Return Value
Connected - The control is connected to the database.
Not Connected - The control is not connected to the database.
In Progress - The control is connecting to the database.
 
Sounds like an "SQL injection attack" (by accident). They have to run the query through a function that properly "escapes" illegal characters - it puts slashes in front of them, etc, and should be totally seamless to you. Sounds like the patch covers that...(y)
 
John Connor? jesus cripes SKYNET, run for yer lives! "Come with me if you want to live (or save your SQL database)"

Christian Bale approves.
 
DaveW:
Thanks DaveW!The thing is that the Alarm Viewer activeX buffers the Alarms and still displays them in the ActiveX even if the connection to the Database is severed. We were expecting the "Alarm DBlogger Manager" to flush the buffered Alarms to the Database once we stopped the DBManager but obviously this would not work as the connection was down. Those buffered alarms were then also lost.

The ".ConnectStatus" should do the job well. Will prob use it with a DataChange Script. does that make sense?
 
It only works while the activex is shown so you should put it into the screen's while showing script.
 
DaveW,
If I only put it on the Screens "While Showing" script then the Alarms will only be enabled when somebode browses to that screen??
I need to have an alarm immediatly if the database ever goes down again.
should I have an invisible alarm display object embedded in the screens header or how should I approach?
thanks again
 
Billy, unfortunately that's the short fall of using an activex. What you can also do is create a small window with the alarm viewer and move it off screen so it's not visible. Put your script in that screen.
 

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