Viewing Trace Information

Whether using the circular log or the flat file, the format of the trace record is the same. Each trace record contains several fields of data, separated by the vertical bar character (|). This design was adopted because the trace log can be easily imported into most database and spreadsheet programs. This allows you to employ the powerful features of these programs to help view the trace data, and diagnose any issue more effectively.

Depending upon the context of the trace record, some fields may be empty. If the message does not pertain to a certain point, then Point ID, value, address, etc., will be empty. In general, the first four fields, and the last field will always contain data. The Result Code field will often contain zero (0x00000000), which means either success, or there was no Result Code to report.

Trace Record Fields

The fields contained in every trace record are as follows (in the order they appear in the trace record, from left to right):

Field name		Description
Time Stamp	The time stamp when the record was logged to the file in the following format: yyyymmdd.hhmmsstttt Note: This format represents times to a precision of one ten thousandth of a second.
Device ID	If the trace record was written by the Port, this will contain PortLevel, otherwise it will contain the CIMPLICITY Device ID of the device that generated the trace record.
Thread ID	This contains the name of the thread that generated the trace record. CIMPLICITY communications with the Driver Server have four threads of execution.
	TOOLKIT	CIMPLICITY devcom toolkit thread.
	PING	Ping thread owned by device object.
	WATCHER	Watcher thread owned by device object.
	SERVER	OPC Server's thread (when events are fired).
Message	The message to you. Many of these have additional data embedded in them. Some are very verbose. This message can be up to 512 bytes in length.
Result (error) Code	If the trace record represents an error, and an error code was returned to CIMPLICITY from the Driver Server, this field will hold that error code. If the OS has a text description of the error code, that will display as well. If there is no error code, this field will be zero (0x00000000), and the description will indicate success.
Group ID	Each CIMPLICITY Device contains at least two groups (DEFAULTPOLL and DEFAULTUNSO). There will be more if they were defined in the project. If the trace record is associated with a group, this field will contain the group's name.
Point ID	If the trace record is associated with a certain point, this field will contain the point's ID (name).
Point Address	If the trace record is associated with a certain point, this field will contain the point's address.
Point Value	If the trace record is associated with a certain point, this field will contain the point's value and variant type.
Point Quality	If the trace record is associated with a certain point, this field will contain the point's quality.
Trace Message ID	Each trace record in the Driver Server has a unique ID. This will be used for future enhancements.