Exercise – Creating a Real Database for Your Probes
Creating your Custom Database
Previously we relied on a saved database definition in the first case, and a very small and simple database in the second case. When creating a database for a set of probes installed at a determined location, some fields will have to be individually edited for each probe.
Vision Database Creator (Figure: Vision Database Creator) requires four fields in the Probe Definition table for each probe. These are: Name, Latitude, Longitude and Host Name (or IP Address). If you just have a probe name and network host name, then you can use the Locate feature to capture the GPS coordinates of each probe. That is enough information in the Probe Definition table to create the database.
Vision Database Creator
The Group, Contact, and Height fields are often left blank. If an email address is entered in the Contact field for a particular probe, then an email is sent to the contact email address each time that probe has a failure.
Note
Before email notifications can be sent, email settings must be configured in Vision Acquire.Clicking Email Configuration opens a dialog where the user enters their email server and user identification. For more information Vision Acquire, see Vision Acquire.
The Height field is reserved for future use. Leaving this blank will generate Warning messages when creating a database, but it will not stop the database creation. Since the value is not used, you are not forced to enter anything.
The only field you can leave blank in the Channel Definitions table is the Mask field. The Mask is set of limit lines setup by the user that is used to capture signal limit violations. If no mask is specified, every trace passes. Also, if a mask is applied that does not match the frequency range of the sweep data, then the sweep will pass. If the range of the mask overlaps the sweep data, even if only slightly, the mask will be applied where possible and the trace marked as failed if it exceeds the mask where it can be tested.
The only way to enter Mask definitions into a database when it is created is to export masks from another database using the Mask Editor in Vision Monitor, then importing that mask definition into the Database Creator. If you do not have masks that can be imported, or you have no useful masks in another database, then you will need to create the database without masks defined. To learn more about setting up Masks, see Setting up a Mask. Once the database is created, collect some traces, then open the Mask editor and use the traces present as reference traces to generate and apply masks to the database.
Click New in the Vision Database Creator to begin the process of creating a custom database. Enter as much information as you can, then click OK. This will generate entries for the input tables. The tables will almost certainly need to be edited.
