Attach to Alert Data

This section contains the following:

§ “Attach to Alert Data Dialog” on page 1027

Attach to Alert Data Dialog

You can access the Attach to Alert Data dialog, which is used to connect an object property to information about your alerts, from the Object Properties window. Once a property has been attached to alert data, it receives continuous updates.

Right-click on the Property Name from the Object Properties window and select Attach to Data>Alert to display the Attach to Alert Data dialog. The Attach to Alert Data dialog provides four drop down menus that allow you to specify information regarding the alert data you want to display.

The Alert Variable Name drop down menu lists all available alert variables. Drop down menus for Column(s) and Filter Column populate based on the selected Alert Variable Name. The Column(s) and Filter Column drop down menus will only contain options if the selected Alert Variable Name contains tabular information. If the item you require is not listed, type your selection into the field. To add an alert, select Tools>Alerts to open the Alerts dialog. See “Adding Alerts” for more information.

It is possible to indicate multiple columns for the filter and multiple values to compare against for each column. If the number of specified column names does not correspond to the number of values listed, then extra names and/or values are ignored.

Note: Spaces around separators are not allowed.

Field Name	Description
Alert Variable Name	Name of the alert variable to display. The drop down menu will contain the names of all active alerts. These names correspond to the alertName property for each object in your active alert definition files. In addition, the following built-in tables are listed:
	“AlertTable” - Contains all active and cleared alerts. “Alert Variables Table” - Contains all of the active alert variables and their current state. The current state of an alert is the highest severity for the alert. For tabular alerts, it is the highest severity for all alerts in the table. Alerting Enabled - Indicates whether the alert engine is enabled to the Alert data source. See “Alerting Enabled Table” for more information. Action Audit Table - Returns the “Alert Action Audit Table” as specified on the Alerts tab of the Application Options dialog or on the command line. Action Audit Connection - Indicates the connected status of the Alert Action Audit table.
	Alert Settings Table - Contains alert settings. Note: Only available if Self Service Alerts are enabled and RTView has successfully connected to the Alert Settings Table. Self Service Audit Table - Contains changes made to the Alert Settings Table if a Self Service Audit Table was specified on the “Self Service Alerts Tab” of the Application Options dialog. Note: Only available if “Self Service Alerts” are enabled and RTView has successfully connected to the Self Service Audit Table. Self Service Connections - Indicates whether or not RTView is connected to the Alert Settings Table and, if specified, the Self Service Audit Table. The connection is considered good if the SQL connection is good and at least one update has been received. Note: Only available if “Self Service Alerts” are enabled.
New Data Only	If selected, only rows that have changed for the selected built-in table (i.e. AlertTable, Alert Variables Table, or Alerting Enabled) are updated. This is useful when a cache or the Historian is attached to this table so that duplicate rows are not stored. Note: For optimization purposes, if New Data Only is selected, the AlertTable will not be updated if the only columns that contain changes for that row are Last Update Time and Count. In many cases these two columns are not used by RTView applications, so selecting New Data Only prevents unnecessary data updates. However if your RTView application is using the values in those columns, you can use the lutupdatesnewdata command line option to enable this update for the AlertTable when New Data Only is selected. See “Options Enabled with Alerts” for more information.
Column(s)	If the alert data is tabular, you can select which column(s) to display.
Filter Rows	Check box to indicate whether or not to filter rows. Filters can only be used for tabular data. See “Row Filtering” for more information.
Filter Column	Name of the column to use as a filter. Multiple column names should be entered as a semicolon (;) delimited list (i.e. col1;col2;col 3). If your column name contains a space or a semicolon, then the entire name must be enclosed in single quotes.
Filter Value	Value that the Filter Column must equal. Multiple filter values should be entered as a nested list, where values for a given column are separated by commas within a semicolon (;) delimited list (i.e. val1,val2;val3,val4;val5,val6). If your filter value contains a space or a semicolon, then the entire value must be enclosed in single quotes. When * is entered as a filter field value, data for all values in the specified filter column will be used to update the object property. When "*" is entered, only the literal comparative value will be used. These are only allowed for objects which display tabular data.
Data Server	Select to read data through configured Data Server(s) and not directly from alert data. Default - Select the default Data Server you configured in Application Options>“Data Server Tab” None - Bypass data being redirected through the specified data server(s) for this attachment and instead attach directly to the data source. Named Data Servers - Select a Named Data Server that you configured in Application Options>“Data Server Tab”
	Multi-Server Attachment - To configure multiple data servers, enter a semicolon (;) delimited list containing two or more Named Data Servers (e.g. ds101;ds102). Each name specified must correspond with a Named Data Server that you configured in Application Options>“Data Server Tab”. It is also possible to specify __default and __none (e.g. __default;ds101;ds102). Note: The values __default and __none begin with two underscore characters. Alternatively, a value of * can be entered to specify all data servers, including __default and __none. When multiple data servers are specified, the data attachment will be directed to each data server in the list. For tabular data attachments, a column named DataServerName will be added as the first column of the table and contain the name of the server from which the data was received. A multi-server attachment will receive data independently from each of the servers it specifies, so in most cases it will be necessary to combine the tables received into a single table. This can be accomplished in two ways: 1. The multi-server attachment can be applied to a local cache that has the DataServerName column specified as an index column. The current table of that cache will contain the combination of the tables received from all servers. Note: It may also be necessary to configure cache row expiration settings to remove defunct rows. 2. The multi-server attachment can be applied as the Table argument of the RTView function named Combine Multi-Server Tables. See “Tabular Functions” for more information.

When an object property is attached to data, the Property Name and Value in the Object Properties window will be displayed in green. This indicates that editing this value from the Object Properties window is no longer possible. To remove the data attachment, and resume editing capability in the Object Properties window, right-click on the Property Name and select Detach from Data. You will recognize that an object property has been detached from the data source when the Property Name and Value are no longer green.

Substitutions

Substitutions allow you to build open-ended displays in which data attachments depend on values defined at the time the display is run. Generic names, such as $alert1 and $alert2, are used instead of values for specific alert variable names. Later when the display is running, these generic values are defined by the actual names of specific alert variables, such as production_alert. In this way, a single display can be reused to show data from a number of different sources. For more information on creating displays using substitution values, see “Substitutions”.

Select Table Columns

You can specify which table columns to display and in what order they will appear from the Attach to Alert Data dialog. In order to populate the listing of available columns, you must first select a valid Alert Variable Name.

Click the ellipse button in the Column(s) field (or right-click in the Column(s) field and choose Select Columns) to display the Select Columns dialog. The dialog should contain a list of Available Columns that you can add to your table.

To add a column, select an item from the Available Columns list and click on the Add button. If the item you require is not listed, type your selection into the Enter Column Name field. Click the Remove button to delete an item previously added to the Selected Columns list. You can control the order of columns in a table by arranging the items in the Selected Columns list with the Move Up and Move Down buttons.

If no data is available for a table row within a selected column, the table cell will display one the following values: N/A, false, 0, or 0.0.

The following describes the Attach to Alert Data dialog commands:

Command	Description
OK	Applies values and closes the dialog.
Apply	Applies values without closing the dialog.
Reset	Resets all fields to last values applied.
Clear	Clears all fields. Detaches object from data source (once Apply or OK is selected).
Cancel	Closes the dialog with last values applied.