I am trying to decide the best way to log and keep track of Alerts and what we call ‘Events’ (machine events). We have existing systems in which I am trying to convert the functionality to Ignition. Our existing systems make use of a SQL database table that is actually used to enter the desired alarm (alert) tag information, plc address, descriptions, severity, etc… and then another table is used to Log the alarms. We have set up ‘Events’ in the same manner - our events are, in a sense, the same as alarms; we are just keeping track of somthing that happened (i.e. a button pushed, a limit switch made… etc…).
Being new to IA, i was wondering if the above scheme is something that can be duplicated (or would you even recommend doing that?) AND would we be better off using the Alert Configuration at the SQLTag level or trying to set up Alerting using the Transaction Groups (still a little ‘fuzzy’ on how this might work).
I have some alarms set up and also configured 2 Alert Storage Profiles and have a filter on each to determine which SQL table to send the Alert/Event to (seems to work ok). Just trying to determine the best path to go down.
Thanks for your help
Let me clarify - The Alerts i have set up are configured using the standard SQLTag Alert Configurations.
We recommend using our alerting system to track events. The reason is that we will insert a new row when the event occurs and update the row when the event completes. If you tried to do that with transaction groups you would have to create two groups per event, which can be a lot of groups.
I like that you split up the alert storage into two profiles to you can track real alarms in one and machine events in another database.
OK, glad to know that i’m going down the right path.
With that said, can you tell me how i can access the Notes Area of an Alert Tag when the user has a given Alert selected in the Alert Summary - i would like to be able to have the user type in a note for a given alert tag. So far i only see how to display the notes.
Thanks again for your help!
Right now there is nothing built-in to allow users to add notes. However, you can add the functionality yourself by adding a table in the database to store the notes.
Every alarm is identified by the system, path, and state name. Each of those fields can be extracted from the alert summary table component. You can add custom properties to the root container of the window and bind them to the following expressions:try({Root Container.Alert Summary.alerts}[{Root Container.Alert Summary.selectedRow}, "System"], "")try({Root Container.Alert Summary.alerts}[{Root Container.Alert Summary.selectedRow}, "Path"], "")try({Root Container.Alert Summary.alerts}[{Root Container.Alert Summary.selectedRow}, "State Name"], "")If nothing is selected in the alarm summary table you will get an empty string. You can put a text area component on the window so the user can type in a note. When the user presses the save button you can insert the note into the database:[code]system = event.source.parent.system
path = event.source.parent.path
stateName = event.source.parent.stateName
note = event.source.parent.getComponent(“Text Area”).text
if system != “”:
system.db.runPrepUpdate(“INSERT INTO NotesTable (System, Path, StateName, DateTime, Note) VALUES (?,?,?,CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,?)”, [system, path, stateName, note])
system.gui.messageBox(“Note added”)[/code]You can then view the notes by running a SELECT query on the new table.