11.3 Viewing measurement data

After reaching the equipment level with one of the navigation methods described above, the measurement results can be reviewed in chart form by selecting the equipment. The application has several so called equipment display templates (and administrators can define more) which govern how and which charts should be displayed on the page of the equipment. Charts also can be grouped together and shown/hidden together.

When viewing an equipment the application shows different subtabs:

·       Properties: the equipment’s main parameters and optionally its current alarm status. If there are alarms on the equipment then the bottom of the subtab is colored accordingly:

·       The names of the different available equipment display template subtabs

·       Optional other subtabs pointing to other related equipments

If there are no equipment display template for the equipment then the application shows every chart in the default order on a Charts subtab (see below).

The user can change with the preferences, whether the private, public and basic charts should appear. It is an important to remember, that the elements in the main part of the display and in the Every chart group of the Browser plane do not necessarily correspond: the PVSR chooses automatically only the fewest charts possible. This means that by considering the basic settings – when both the private and public charts are displayed – if a measurement is visible on a private or public chart, then it will not be shown on the basic measurement chart. If, however, this measurement is, for example, an interface traffic measurement and only the input traffic appears on any of the public or private charts, then the interface measurement chart will also be shown since the output traffic measurement is not yet displayed anywhere else. Independently from this logic, all possible measurements and public and private charts are displayed in the Every chart group which are applicable for the selected equipment display template. If only a chart is selected which has data from multiple measurements then here all those measurements are shown separately.

When viewing an equipment or a measurement then reports might also appear based on the configuration of the system on the Reports subtab. In this case the name of the report is shown along with the whether it shows real-time data or data for a time-span. In real-time mode the last collected values are shown, while in non-real-time mode calculated report values are shown for a time-span. It is important to mention that in the later case the same values are shown as in the Reports menu. So for example if the data is shown for the current day, then the aggregation does not present data collected during the current hour, or for example if the report is set to aggregate data on the weekdays and the page is shown for Saturday then the report table does not contain any values. Also since the reports only contain data for whole days, so for example if the selected time span is from Monday 2pm until Wednesday 4am then the report part will show the calculated values for the whole days Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

If someone opens an equipment then the application checks the chart templates and looks for those which are configured to be created automatically, and for which the chart had not been created yet for the current equipment. For every such chart template it creates a new chart in the name of the admin user.

The user can expand and collapse each chart separately in the Measurement menu when viewing an equipment or a virtual equipment by clicking on the  or on the  icon and he can also expand and collapse separator texts when viewing a virtual equipment. This can be changed for all the charts of an equipment or a virtual equipment in just one step: the user only need to choose either the “Show all charts” or the “Hide all charts” from the “Display option” drop-down list on the Browser area. If a chart is collapsed then PVSR do not request data for it from the server and only displays its name. The system remembers for each chart the user’s last choice, so if he collapsed a chart then next time he is viewing the equipment, the chart will still be collapsed. Each user can set in the Preferences menu the default chart expand/collapse mode separately for equipment and for virtual equipment and also can reset the system, i.e. erase his previous chart expand/collapse settings for each chart.

Also, because of minimizing the required – sometimes unnecessary – chart drawings, for image based charts the PVSR draws only the first 20 charts, and the others only when the user scrolls down the page so that they become visible. For JavaScript based charts the application queries the data for only the first 20 chart (this can be set on the server side), and for the others only when the user scrolls down the page so that they become visible.

The “Display option” drop-down list serves many purposes: it can be used to show and to hide all the charts, it can be used to show deleted elements, change the chart ordering or to change the amount of object parameter shown on the page.

·       To show or hide all the charts the user needs to select either the “Show all charts” or the “Hide all charts” option

·       To show the deleted elements the “Display deleted” option has to be selected from the “Display option” drop-down list, and the “Hide deleted” has to be selected to undo this. If the user chooses it then the application will show the deleted objects in the Every chart group as well on the main area, so the user can view the measured values for these objects as well. The application uses the same icon for these elements and it uses line-through decorated fonts for their names. This feature is available only for the administrators, the restricted administrators and those normal users who have the right.

·       The “Enable chart ordering” option can be used to change the ordering of the charts and separator texts. If an administrator changes the ordering for an equipment and he does not have private charts for it then the new ordering will affect all the other users as well. Non-administrators can also change the chart ordering, except for public virtual equipments. After the mode is selected the user has to click on either the  (if there is no custom ordering yet) or the  (if the charts are already custom ordered) icon, keep the mouse button down, and drag the chart to its new position. After all the changes are made the “Disable chart ordering” option can be used to return to the normal mode. The chart ordering can be reseted for equipments with the “Reset chart ordering” option

The Browser on the left hand side of the window can be used in the usual way. On top the time interval can be selected, and the next group, the View group consists of the following items:

• Large charts: the charts appear in one column
• Medium charts: the charts appear in two columns
• Small charts: the charts are arranged in a three column table
• Smaller charts: the charts are arranged in a four column table

The user can set in his preferences the default chart size as well. A chart always uses the whole available area, namely if we hide the menu system using the expand page icon, or change the shape of the Browser window, then PVSR redraws the chart(s) accordingly.

The already known Chart Settings group can also be found here (see 9 Using the charts). The values specified here are applied to every chart on the right hand side. Accordingly, this panel is not worth to parameterize, unless a single chart or more charts with similar values are displayed on the right hand side.

The Every chart group can be seen on the bottom, where the measurements are listed for the selected equipment. Here, by clicking on the individual measurements, the chart of the selected measurement can be displayed alone on the right hand side, thereby significantly speeding up the process of displaying charts.

11.3.1 Measurement graphs

The detailed analysis of a chart (together with the corresponding measurement data) can be started by a click on its graph, or with the selection of the measurements from the Every chart. See the section “Using the charts” for a detailed description of the chart system.