Generic Device Properties

Some settings are common to Devices of different types. They can be accessed by the Edit Connection Properties action of any Device context.

Field Description

Field Name

Device Name. Name of the Data Terminal context, required to refer to this Device from other parts of the system. It should satisfy the context naming conventions.

name

Device Description. Textual description of the Device. It may indicate Device type, location, purpose or other important characteristics.

description

Device Type. Type of the Device. In most cases the type is auto-detected, but sometimes it may be necessary to specify it manually to enable proper processing of device data. Generic device type instructs AggreGate Server that no special processing of device data or custom communication activities are necessary.

type

Synchronization Period. This setting defines how often full Device synchronization with the server is performed. However, individual Device settings may have custom synchronization period defined by Device Settings Synchronization Options.

syncPeriod

Interrupt Synchronization And Reconnect On Error. Causes the synchronization process to stop if an error occurs during the synchronization of any setting. This also forces AggreGate Server to disconnect from the device and reconnect before the next synchronization. Enabling this option may be very useful when I/O or device error during synchronization of one setting will most likely repeat during synchronization of the the remaining settings.

interruptOnError

Suspend Device. Suspended Devices are never synchronized with the server.

suspend

Enable Extended Status. Enables/disables extended device synchronization status.

extendedStatus

Time Zone. Time zone the Device is located in. May be used by device driver for timestamp conversions, e.g. when synchronizing device internal clock with the server.

timeZone

Device Dependency Expression. This expression is evaluated before every synchronization. If evaluation result is false, synchronization is not performed.

Dependency Expression Resolution Environment:
Default Context	Context of current device.
Default Data Table	None.
Default Row	0
Environment Variables	Standard variables only.

It's a common practice to make device dependency expression referring to the online status of some other Device. For example, in a network management system it may be useful to disable synchronization for a group of devices that are connected to AggreGate Server through a router if the router itself is offline (i.e. not accessible). In this case, the following dependency expression may be used for each of these devices:

{users.admin.device.router:status$connectionStatus} == 0

It's possible to find out the numeric value of the Offline connection status (zero above) by browsing the selection values in the variable information for the status variable of a Device context.

dependency

Enable Offline Alert. Flag that controls whether or not a Device Offline alert will be generated if the Device stays in disconnected state for some time.

offlineAlert