Citadel 5/Lookout 6.0 Alarms to SQL Server

[skibum019]

Citadel 5/Lookout 6.0
There is documentation in the release notes regarding using SQL Server for logging alarms vs. the MSDE installation. Is there any documentation on how to accomplish this or how to migrate to a remote SQL Server for this feature?

[Danny G.]

Hello,

Yes, Citadel 5 uses MSSQL to store alarms and events, though we do not provide direct access to this database.
In theory is is possible to query this database, but the tables we've implemented are not designed to be used directly.

The best way to enable alarms across a network is to have Citadel and DSC installed on both the local and remote machines.
Citadel handles the transaction of alarms, traces, etc..

You may find this link helpful:
Citadel 5 Remote Database Access Using COM+ and ADO


Regards,

Danny G.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

[TRL]

Hi, A somewhat related query

---- Web clients cannot see/share alarms with server processes ----

The Lookout manual suggests the client/server approach to development of processes. The server handelling the hardware connections and alarms. We have developed our application this way. We use a web client that runs intermittently as the user(s) log in and out. Since alarms can occur anytime, there is no use embedding the alarms in the client processes.

I see no way to inform the web client processes about non current alarms. That is, an alarm condition that has been breeched then corrected between client log ins. Likewise, there is no way for users to acknowledge these alarms, only administrators who have access to the server processes. There is a very handy "NI Alarm Event Browser" ActiveX object that seems to be written to fix this yet is cannot be exported to the web client!!! I posted this same query for Lookout 5.1 and it still seems to be an issue with Lookout 6.

Any NI comments or fixes?

Thanks

[Danny G.]

Hello,

The NI Alarm Event Browser is still unsupported when using the web client in Lookout 6.0. However, if you would like to acknowledge alarms from the web client you can create a push button or similar object that is connected to the acknowledge alarm command.

Regards,

Danny G
Applications Engineer
National Instruments