At a Glance

Archiving is used to store in a file all error messages as soon as they appear, disappear or are acknowledged. As soon as a message is read in the diagnostics buffer it is saved in the archive file.

If a fault appears and then disappears, it is represented by a single message in the Diagnostics Viewer (a single line), but by 2 lines in the archive file.

The Properties dialog box allows you to activate archiving of error messages. It also allows you to define the type of archiving and the location of the archive file.

Type of archiving

You can choose between 2 types of archiving:

• cyclic archiving: The history file created is named ProjectName.his, were ProjectName is the name you entered in the Project Properties dialog box is.

  in order to avoid the size of the archive file becoming too large, a new ProjectName.his file is created every 1000 saves. The old file then changes name and becomes ProjectName.bak.

  Note: If a ProjectName.bak file already exists, it will be overwritten by the new file of the same name. To avoid a loss of data, you must therefore manage your archive files.

• periodic archiving: the user defines the frequency with which a new archive file is created (between 1 and 24 hours). The file is created under the name ProjectDraft_date_time (for example, for a file created on 31 July 2001 at 12 h 26 min 55 s: ProjectDraft_073101_122655. If the chosen frequency is 1 h, the next file will be created under the name ProjectDraft_073101_132655, etc.). Creating a new file does not overwrite the previous file.

Archive file format

The archive file is a delimited ASCII file (each item of information is separated by the ; character). You can therefore easily import this file into a text editor or a spreadsheet.

Each line of the file takes the following form:

SystemAlarm ; 256 ; 1 ; 51 ; 0 ; 28/04/03  23:50:13 ; 28/04/03 23:51:15; 28/04/03 23:57:16 ; 0 ; 2; 10003 ;148 ; Arithmetic error ; %S18 (MAST); 

where:

• SystemAlarm: identifies the fault.

  The types of fault can be:

  • FBAlarm: function block fault

  • SFCAlarm: sequential function chart fault

  • SystemAlarm: system fault

  • UndefAlarm: undefined fault

  • AlarmERROR: errors

• 256: fault identifier,

• 1: name of this fault,

• 51: state of the diagnostics bits,

• 0: number of the declared area,

• 28/04/03 23:50:13: date and time of appearance of the fault,

• 28/04/03 23:51:15: date and time of acknowledgement of the fault,

• 28/04/03 23:57:16: date and time of disappearance of the fault,

• 0: available number of reasons for the fault,

• 2: status length of the fault,

• 10003: fault type,

• 148: fault classification,

• Arithmetic error; %S18 (MAST): additional data if you have checked the Additional information field box.

The following table describes the additional information to a message according to fault type.