Vlogger

• specific time intervals,
• when channel values change, or 
• on a trigger event. 

These data are then recorded to disk files. All three types of logging can be enabled or disabled by the use of a binary gate channel, allowing you to precisely control when or when not to archive data.

The Vlogger environment supports many Vlogger engines to run at the same time, each with their own settings, allowing great flexibility and efficiency. Data on different units of production can have their own Vlogger data files for post production analysis. This eases later retrieval when the unit number is part of the Vlogger filename. Selected Vlogger files can be viewed together as one file as though they were stored as a single file.  Vlogger is also optimized for time-series data.

See below for details on Vlogger utilities:

• Vtrend
• Playback
• SQL Interface

With Vlogger you can

• Archive selected data (values--including whole arrays and images--and fields) to disk in three modes, each optionally gated:
  • Time mode
  • Change/event mode
  • Triggered mode
• Archive local or remote database channels
• Access (read from) logs while they are being written to
• Store data in compressed binary files and easily convert those files to ASCII format
• Achieve rates much greater than 8,000,000 values per second archived to disk (generally limited by the disk performance)
• Create archive files that are circular in time or size
• Archive any field of any channel (Alarm limits, calibrations, etc.)
• Dynamically add data to or delete data to be recorded from a running archive
• Archive data only once in the header, if required, saving space if the value is fixed
• Play back data into the Vaccess database via Playback
• Time stamp data either from the source or with Vlogger from system time
• Record data out of time order
• Create archive files directly with the documented API Vlogger/SQL
• Retrieve data with the documented SQL interface
• Run multiple loggers at different rates, each capturing data from any selection of local or remote databases
• Merge, copy, and move archive files using the Varchive utility
• Extract data based on time or SQL condition to a new archive file

Vlogger comes with its own full API, which allows application programs to both create and analyze archive files. Vlogger tasks run in a client-server environment, with management from any node in the network using graphical interface tools.

Our customers use Vlogger to capture data at very high speeds. They are able to maximize disk usage through our optional use of circular disk buffers and archive files. Vlogger allows users to examine their systems' efficiencies in great detail. Archived data can be used to isolate causes of process errors, identify process inefficiencies, and help identify the results of changes made to system parameters by enabling users to examine before and after archives, leading to process and quality improvement..

Some customers have developed extensive training and/or simulation systems with Vlogger. Actual plant data can be played back to nonproduction databases to offer realistic training scenarios. Customers have used Vlogger to record critical system parameters, such as the ramping of a furnace to a given temperature. Once these parameters have been accurately recorded, they have used this archived data for actual process control, thus giving them a way to precisely repeat a given sequence of events.

Vlogger comes complete with a variety of utilities for analyzing and manipulating archived data. With these tools, you can

• Access archived data through SQL calls
• Export data to flat files, spreadsheets and data analysis packages
• Play back archived data to a live database
• Take a snapshot of a database so that it can be reset to a known state
• View archived data in a graphical window

These tools are discussed individually below.

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 Vtrend

Complete historical data at your fingertips! With Vsystem software, you can do more than look at data as they are archived. Vtrend provides a history and trending tool for viewing archived data graphically.

You control the parameters; for example, you select start and stop times for viewing data. You select the set (or subset) of channels to view. You can set display colors and limits. A zoom feature provides a detailed picture of your data in the colors and line patterns you select.

Vtrend gives you the tools needed to export the data that you are viewing graphically to a spreadsheet, a flat file, or a report generator format. You may choose to reduce the amount of exported data by filters, or you can export the entire sample.

Vtrend

• Allows you to display Vlogger data graphically from one Vlogger file or many at one time
• No limit to the number of pens or channels displayed
• Supports all analog data types, binaries, messages, and arrays
• Has zoom and pan functions
• Allows you to extract data to text files
• Includes configurable x-y plots
• Maintains statistics
• Includes fourier transform plot and an interface for user-written data-manipulation routines
• Can display analog data separately or in one graph
• Can display pictures stored in any channel

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Vlogger Playback Utility

Create off-line simulations or training systems. Using our Playback utility, you can play back an archive file into a Vsystem database to determine problems, train operators, or perform useful analyses of "what if" scenarios. You can also use Playback to play a prerecorded scenario, such as the furnace ramping described above, into an on-line, live database.

You can adjust the playback rate to observe events in slow motion, or perhaps single-step through critical data, or you can fast forward to interesting parts of your data. You can set the start and stop time of the playback session and use only those channels that you wish to view.

Playback offers a graphical control panel for supervising playback sessions.

Vlogger Playback

• Plays Vlogger files back into the database
• Controls rates, channels
• Has an autorepeat function to provide continous cycling of playback

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Vlogger Table and Vlogger SQL Interface

Create data tables from archived data files. The Table utility allows users to convert Vsystem archive files into ASCII tabular data. This tool can be used to prepare archived data for export to spreadsheets and report writers, or simply to give a recorded archive a human-readable format for viewing or printing.

The Table utility features an SQL subset interface for searching and extracting data from archive files. You can choose archive files to be processed and choose target text files to export to. You can filter channel names by supplying channel lists consisting of those channel names that you find interesting. You can choose the time span in which to search for the specified data, with or without the actual printing of time stamps. Or you can choose to view channel data iteratively, such as every fifth data sample.

Vlogger SQL provides an SQL interface to Vlog files.

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Vreport

Create summary reports from archived data files and active databases. Vreport builds on Vlogger SQL and provides both a utility to easily define and schedule text-based reports as well as a JDBC interface for report writer packages like Jasper and Crystal Reports.

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Updated Jan 5, 2010