Data Transfer/Device Plugin is a special type of plugin that defines how LinkServer interacts with the certain type of hardware devices or with the stream of data received from a given Device Server. Data Transfer/Device Plugins are also called Device Drivers.
All Data Transfer/Device Plugins are divided into categories:
| • | Direct plugins communicate with hardware devices and process their data. |
| • | Non-Direct plugins process data received from Device Servers. This usually means interacting with hardware devices connected to AggreGate using these Device Servers. |
Every plugin has up to three levels of settings:
| • | Global settings. These settings affect the default behaviour of plugins. Global settings may be edited only by users with sufficient permissions. |
| • | User settings. These settings affect the behaviour of a plugin only if it is assigned to a Device Server that belongs to a certain user account. When the plugin is processing data from a particular Device Server, it uses the user settings stored in the owner's account. |
| • | Device Server settings. These settings affect the behaviour of the plugin assigned to a certain Device Server Account. When the plugin is processing data from a particular Device Server, it uses the Device Server settings that are stored in the Device Server's account. |
Usually there's no reason to use all three setting levels.
New Device Server Accounts use the Device Plugin defined by the Default Data Transfer/Device Plugin global configuration setting. The plugin type may be later changed by editing settings of Device Server Account.
Administering Data Transfer/Device Plugins
Two context types are used to administer Data Transfer/Device Plugins: first is the general Device Plugins Configuration context, which serves as a container. The other is the Device Plugin Configuration context, which holds the configuration for a single plugin. These appear in two places:
If a given plugin doesn't contain settings on one of these levels, the corresponding Device Plugin Configuration context will not be created (i.e, won't exist in the System Tree). Device Server-level settings for a plugin may be accessed using the Configure Data Transfer/Device Plugin action of a Device Server context. |
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