ViewPoint Manual

Functional Description
ViewPoint Manual—426801-001
5-12
Operation of Status Components
Configuring a status item primarily consists of specifying the kind of item (display type)
and the system node from which to obtain the item. You must specify the particular
object, and provide a description (up to 22 characters) that will mean something to you
when the item is displayed on the Network Status Summary screen. Optional items for
configuring are threshold highlighting, values for computing percentages, and a request
to reverse the significance of status data. To reverse the significance of status data, for
example, you could do the following: instead of using 0 to signify idle and 100 to
signify a completely busy processor, you could use 0 to signify a completely busy
processor (no capacity left) and 100 to signify idle (100% capacity remaining).
When you request the Network Status Summary screen (by pressing function key F2),
the ViewPoint TCP retrieves one page of status-item configuration data from the
configuration file and uses this data to get status information from the subsystems
regarding each of the 16 objects. The ViewPoint process then displays the received
status information on the screen. At periodic intervals (as specified on the Status
Configuration screen), a new set of 16 update requests goes out from the ViewPoint
process to get new status information from the subsystems for the page currently
displayed.
To display other pages of status items, you can use the PREV PAGE (or PG UP) and the
NEXT PAGE (or PG DN) keys, or you can specify a page number on the option line
(line 24) and press F2 to go directly to that page. These keys fetch a different page of
configuration data from the configuration file, resulting in status being requested for
16 different items.
You can always press F2 (Status) to force an immediate update of the screen. Also, you
can use a Freeze key (F8) to inhibit automatic updates until you resume with the Thaw
key (SF8).
When you request the Primary Events screen or the Alternate Events screen from the
Network Status Summary screen and then return, your screen context is preserved. That
is, you return to the page from which you left, any selected status items are still marked,
and the frozen or thawed state is the same. Screen context is not preserved when you
move from page to page of the status display; in that case, only the frozen or thawed
state is preserved.
Operation of Status Components
Figure 5-9 illustrates the main components of the status reporting function. The
components shown in the upper half can be in a network node other than the NCN.
An object can typically be a CPU, a disk drive, a terminal, or a communications line.
The display type can be an object-busy value (that is, the percentage busy during the
configured sampling interval), or it can be a count of objects in a group that are currently
started or running. It can also be some other type of value, such as transactions per
second.