Alarm and event logging has stopped

[Bob_L]

Alarm & Event Logging with Citadel 5 and Lookout 6.02.

I have a continuously running application that stopped logging alarms and events approx. 6 weeks ago. (March 07, 2010) The problem went unnoticed until a recent event/alarm sequence needed to be investigated. Data traces are not a problem. They are visible using MAX as well as with Lookout hypertrends. However, MAX shows nothing for alarms or events past that date. (No problem earlier, going back to 2002)

The Alarm panel in Lookout will show the alarms and events as they occur so I know they're being detected.

I understand that the data traces are logged to Citadel, whereas alarms and events are passed to the MSSQL server. (In my case the free version that comes with XP - SQL Server Express I believe.)

This version has a database size limit of 4 GB. What exactly does that mean?
An *.mdf file >4GB cannot be created?
An *.mdf file >4GB cannot be read?
The total size of all *.mdf files cannot exceed 4GB?

Curiously the file in use is 1.99GB. When archived, it is only about 750 MB, yet the total number of alarms and events are the same in each. There are other *.mdf files that exist on the system but aren't in use.

NI document 4GPBLT21 states  "Once that limit is reached, the alarm and event data is logged to the high performance Citadel database". Then what? Is that data viewable with MAX?

MAX doesn't appear to have any tools to selectively delete old alarms or events.

How can I determine what has happened and what do I need to do to restart the logging?

Any and all help most welcome.

Bob L

[Ryan.S]

Lookout 6.0.2 uses SQL Server Desktop Engine which has the limit of 2G, so your alarm/event database has already reached the limit.

After the SQL database is full, the alarm/event will be logged to Citadel database. But this maybe reduces the performance of Citadel, that's why we log alarm/event to SQL Server first. But I'm not sure why the alarm logging is stoppted.

To delete the alarms from SQL Server is not straightforward. One way is to archive it. Follow the steps below.

1. In MAX, create a new database in different folder.

2. Create a Trace View and add the whole old database to the trace view.

3. Right click on the Trace View and select Archive. Archive all to the new database. You don't need to specify the time range.

4. After the achiving, the new database will have all the trace data and no alarm data in it. You can detach the old database.

In Lookout, select File->Modify Process to change the database to the new database. Or you can change the system default database from Option->System. And then the lookout process will use the new database which has no alarm in it.

You can keep the old database files. All the data and alarm/events won't be lost. When you need them, you can attach the database.

[Ryan.S]

Of course, you can right click on the database and select Archive. But this way will archive both historical data and the alarm/event. If you choose to delete the data in source database after archiving, both historical data and the alarm/event will be deleted.

If you want all the historical data kept in current database, follow the steps above.