Advanced programming

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- 1.) Application.config
- 2.) Basic concepts
  - 1.) Composite pattern
    - 1.) Lifecycle
    - 2.) Programming
  - 2.) Properties
    - 1.) Local
    - 2.) Network
    - 3.) Persistance
    - 4.) Configuration
    - 5.) Logging
  - 3.) Synchronous Methods
    - 1.) Virtual methods
  - 4.) References
    - 1.) 1 Object
    - 2.) N Objects locally
    - 3.) N Objects Network
  - 5.) Events
  - 6.) Asynchronous methods
  - 7.) Configuration
    - 1.) Config storage
    - 2.) Overriding
  - 8.) Messages and Alarms
    - 1.) Alarms
  - 9.) Database
    - 1.) Usage
    - 2.) Extend
      - 1.) EF 4.0
      - 2.) EF 7.0
    - 3.) Persistable queries
  - 10.) Designs
    - 1.) GUI Design
      - 1.) Set and convert Properties
      - 2.) Styles and Setter
      - 3.) Property trigger
      - 4.) Datatrigger
      - 5.) Events & trigger
      - 6.) Animations
      - 7.) Resources
    - 2.) Reports
      - 1.) Programming
  - 11.) Diagnose and Debugging
  - 12.) Updates
- 3.) UI-Controls
  - 1.) UI-Library integration
  - 2.) iPlus-Controls
  - 3.) Custom Controls
- 4.) Application programming
  - 1.) Multithreading
  - 2.) Businessobjects
    - 1.) Navigationless
    - 2.) Navigable
    - 3.) Context dependant dialogs
    - 4.) Background Tasks
  - 3.) Manager classes
  - 4.) Process applications
  - 5.) Workflow classes
  - 6.) External systems
    - 1.) Mobile devices
    - 2.) OPC UA Communication
      - 1.) Server
    - 3.) Simatic S7
  - 7.) Bit masking
- 5.) []

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Alarms in iPlus are basically messages of the type "gip.core.datamodel.Msg" that are distributed in the network, viewed, acknowledged and archived in the database. This functionality is implemented in the PAClassAlarmingBase class, which is derived from ACComponent:

If you need your own class with alarm functionality, you must either derive directly from PAClassAlarmingBase or from any other class that inherits indirectly from PAClassAlarmingBase.

The "composition principle", explained in the first chapter, leads to recursive tree structures, the so-called application trees. If application trees contain instances that are capable of alarming (i.e. derivations from PAClassAlarmingBase), their alarm behavior is automatically hierarchical. This means that when a child instance (in any tree depth) generates an alarm, it is also visible along the parent relationship (upwards) and can also be acknowledged by the end user. Conversely, this means that an alarm acknowledgment at an instance at a higher level means that all "sub-alarms" can also be automatically acknowledged.

Alarm events can be tapped, processed and the processing result forwarded using messenger instances. The configuration of which alarms should be taken into account is carried out using the alarm configurator.

The PAClassAlarmingBase class

Query Alarms

The GetAlarms() method is used to query alarms:

[ACMethodInfo("Alarms", "en{'GetAlarms'} de{'GetAlarms'}", 9999)] 
public virtual MsgList GetAlarms (bool thisAlarms, bool subAlarms, bool onlyUnackAlarms)

It returns a list of Msg objects. The three boolean parameters are used for filtering. This method is network-compatible and can be called from the proxy side. For example, the control dialog uses the VBBSOControlPA class, which in turn calls this method to display the alarms of the selected component.

Acknowledgment methods

void AcknowledgeAlarms() only acknowledges the alarms from the instance itself.
void AcknowledgeSubAlarms() only acknowledges the alarms from all child instances.
void AcknowledgeAllAlarms() acknowledges all alarms from the instance itself and all child instances.

Programming

Alarms are saved as Msg-objects in an internal Dictionary<string, Msg>. The entry is removed again in the event of alarm acknowledgments.

The key value of this dictionary is a property name of any network-enabled property that belongs to the class. This means that you can activate a separate alarm message for each property.

Usually an additional property of the type enum gip.core.autocomponent.PANotifyState is declared. This property serves not only as a name index for the internal alarm dictionary, but also for signaling the presence of an alarm on the user interface. i.e. a WPF-Control element is bound to this alarm property via WPF data binding.

If you want to display several alarms for an instance at the same time, you need several alarm properties. Otherwise, the previous alarm from the alarm dictionary is replaced with each new alarm. This means that only the last message can be displayed.

Such an alarm property was defined in the following example:

You get the ID that you pass to the Msg instance so that a translated text is displayed by adding an alarm to your class in the development environment:

Use the OnNewAlarmOccurred() method to add a new entry to the alarm list. If an unacknowledged alarm with the same message text already exists, no new entry is created. If the message text is different, the existing acknowledged alarm is replaced by the new message.

If you also want to write the alarm message to the log file, call the IsAlarmActive() method beforehand to check whether the same message is still pending. This prevents the same message from being output to the log file unnecessarily and multiple times.

You must explicitly set and reset the value of the alarm property yourself so that the bound WPF control indicates the presence of the alarm. You reset it in the overridden AcknowledgeAlarms() method. Don't forget to call base.AcknowledgeAlarms()! Otherwise you will prevent alarms from being acknowledged.

AcknowledgeAlarms() acknowledges all messages that belong to this ACComponent instance. With OnAlarmDisappeared() you can specifically acknowledge a specific alarm message while the others remain unaffected.

An alarm is displayed in the status bar as a flashing warning triangle. Double-click to open the alarm list and then navigate to the component that triggered the alarm - provided you have also added it to the visualization.

Alternatively, you can also acknowledge the alarm using the context menu.

You can find the example code here on gitHub.

Query Alarms

Acknowledgment methods

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