How to find Alarm category for AlarmItemType Object read from SBO System tree ?

[sesa237670_brid]

I am using EWSClient to read all the SBO alarm Objects from
the SBO System tree. I need to find out the Category for the Alarm for my
configuration processor. The AlarmItemType object doesn’t have category
information and I did not found any API in EWSClient to get category
information for an alarm Item.

I wonder if there is any API in EWS Client to get the
category for an alarm item? Or smartconnector methods to retrieve complete
alarm item information or AlarmEventsType object using AlarmItem Id.

I did try ewsClient.getItems(alarmId), however that returns same
AlarmItemType object.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Neeraj Tomar

[sesa180908_brid]

Neeraj,

What SBO shows as "Category" in the Alarm Viewer window, is the AlarmEventType in EWS parlance. 

If you review section 4.6.2 (specifically table 14) from the EWS Specification (https://www.smartconnectorserver.com/DownloadCenter/Contents/ews) you will see that an AlarmEvent has a "Type" property (aka an SBO category). 

The EwsClient supports retrieval of all AlarmEventType defined by a server by using the "GetAlarmEventTypes" method (see section 5.6.4).

M

[sesa237670_brid]

That I know. I am actually talking about reading alarm definition from the SBo tree and not the triggered alarm in Alarm viewer. I need to know alarm item category or type  even before alarm is triggered for my project.

For Example – If an Alarm is defined in SBo as ‘matching text
string alarm’:

Name – ‘ChillerFlowRateAlarm’,

Description - High Temperature Failure for Chillar Plant #1

Category - ~/System/Alarm Control Panel/AlarmHandling/Categories/Chiller Plant #1

Alarm Message - Chiller Flow Rate Failure for Chillar Plant#1

Monitored Variable - ../../CMMSPoints/ChillerFlowRate/Value

This alarm has never been triggered. No Alarm history or instance in alarm viewer. So, When I read this item, I get AlarmItemType object that doesn’t have category information. I know that if there is alarm history I can get type from there. However, there is no history or actual alarm happened yet. It's at the configuration part of the project.

Do you know about how to retrieve category at this point?

[JeffBowman · Accepted solution]

Hi Neeraj,

I don't believe what you are trying to do is possible via EWS. While it's possible to get the list of AlarmEventTypes that are currently in the server, there is no way to get the AlarmEventType per AlarmItem, this is because in EWS an AlarmItem is not confined to a single AlarmEventType (although this is how SBO implements it Internally.)

To go further on the above, the EWS AlarmItem does not contain a property for the AlarmEventType as this is specific to the AlarmEvent itself. In fact, in the EWS world, multiple AlarmEventTypes could in theory be used from an AlarmItem is triggered into alarm to when it is finally returned back to normal, and there would be nothing wrong in doing it this way. However, the way SBO implements AlarmEventType (Category) is to have it a single category bound to the Alarm Object. So even though you know this value is static through the AlarmEvent cycle, there is no way to get this from the AlarmItem itself via EWS.

Regards,

-Jeff