All of the files used by the TsentryGsm data dictionary system reside in the ‘Pif’ directory of the application. (example:  \LocNtRt\sys\pif\* ).

The following table describes the files used by the TsentryGsm data dictionary. 

The data dictionary is built with the GsmPifBld program located in the \tpriNtRt\bin directory.  It requires two parameters:

1.  The fully qualified name of the sysGsm.h header file (input)

2. The fully qualified name of the sysStruct.ini file (output)

The following is an example command as would be submitted to a DOS box command line:

d:\LocNtRt\tpriNtRt\bin\GsmPifBld  d:\LocNtRt\sys\Inc\sysGsm.h  d:\LocNtRt\sys\Pif\sysStruct.ini

Execution of this program will replace the current copy of sysStruct.ini with an updated copy built from the latest application C/C++ language header files.

This program parses all header files included in sysGsm.h and generates the text sysStruct.ini file that specifies the name, type, size, dimensions, and descriptions for all structures and structure members that it finds in the header files.

The data dictionary builder automatically extracts descriptions from the comments associated with each structure member defined in the header files.  Descriptions are parsed according to the following rules:

• Any comment immediately to the right of and on the same line as a structure member declaration will be interpreted as the description for the variable.

• If a comment is found to the right of the variable declaration, then any comments on subsequent lines will be also be included in the variable description.  Description parsing is terminated when a subsequent line contains anything except a comment (e.g. a new structure member declaration or a blank line) or any comment that does not have whitespace immediately following the start-of-comment token (e.g. “//int oldVariable;” will terminate the description parsing).

These descriptions are stored in the sysStruct.ini file along with the properties (name, type, size, etc.) of each of the structure members.

Note however that these descriptions are associated with single structure members in the data dictionary, and a given structure member may exist in multiple locations in the entire data dictionary.  The data dictionary generates the description for a fully qualified variable as follows:

1. If the variable is explicitly specified in the sysVars.ini file, and the variable definition includes a description, the data dictionary uses this string as the official description.

   1. Variable descriptions can be omitted from a variable definition in the sysVars.ini file by specifying an empty string (“”) or an asterisk (*) as the description.

2. If the variable is not specified in the sysVars.ini file, or the variable definition does not include a description, the description for the fully qualified variable name is generated at runtime by concatenating together the descriptions for each structure and member in the variable.  For the global common itself, the system uses the description specified in the [GblCmnDef] section of the sysVars.ini file.  Structure member descriptions are concatenated in reverse order relative to the fully qualified variable name so that the description for the final element is shown first.

For example, suppose a system includes the following header file:

struct ROLLDATA
   {
   double Radius;       // Roll radius (in) 
   double FaceLen;      // Roll face length (in) 
   double Crown;        // Parabolic roll crown (in) 
   };
struct MILDATA
   {
   ROLLDATA Roll[4];    // Rolls installed in mill
   };

and the data dictionary is initialized with the following sysVars.ini file:

[GblCmnDef]
# VarName  Type     GSMName  Mask  AscFile                Description
MILDATA    MILDATA  MILDATA  A     "D:\MILDATA.sav"       "Mill data"

[VarDef]
# VarName               Persist Format InitVal  MinVal MaxVal  Description
MILDATA.Roll[0].FaceLen I       %g     0.001    *      *       *
MILDATA.Roll[0].Crown   I       %g     0.001    *      *       "Concave crown""

The data dictionary would indicate descriptions for each of the following variables as:

The initialization of the data dictionary, including reading the variable definitions, allocation of the global shared regions, populating the global shared regions, and saving the global shared regions is automatically taken care of by the NtRtMgr process.

The data dictionary access may be initialized within any task with the following call:

tpriGsmDDCom::Create();

Access to an individual Global Shared Memory region within a process may be gained with the following call (example region = “SYSDATA”):

struct SYSDATA *pSYS = NULL;
pSYS = (struct SYSDATA *)tpriGsmDDCom::mapGsm("SYSDATA");
   if (pSYS == NULL)
      {  // error in Mapping the global shared memory area
      LogMsg(NTRTTASK,DBFERR, 
             "SYSDATA Global Shared Memory mapping error\n");
      forever = 0;
      }
   else
      {
      LogMsg(NTRTTASK, DBDETAIL, 
             "SYSDATA GSM mapping completed successfully\n");
      }

Access to the Data Dictionary and to the associated Global Shared Memory Regions may be deleted from a process with the following function call:

tpriGsmDDCom::Destroy();

The variables in the Global Shared Memory Regions with “F” persistence may be saved to disk with the following call:

tpriGsmDDCom::saveAllPersist();

Maintenance requirements include the following:

1. Insure that all of the global shared memory regions are defined in the [GblCmnDef] section of the sysVars.ini

2. Insure that all global shared memory structures are defined in the sysGsm.h file.  If this condition is not met, the GsmPifBld execution will fail.

3. Build a new Data Dictionary (sysStruct.ini) each time you have changed the definitions of any variable in any of the Global Shared Memory regions.

4. Manual changes made in the sysVars.ini file will not take effect until the application system is restarted.