Events
ToEvents organizeare timethe basedprimary datameans inof XINA,organizing westructs employdata. events,They which come inhave two forms: instants, referring to a single moment in time, and intervals, referring to a range of time. The goal of events is to make it easy to find, compare, and trend data.
Fields
Unlike most XINAstructs Structs database definitions,databases, event databases may include as many custom fields as required, so long as they do not conflict with the required standard fields:
UEID
Universally unique event identifier (UUID). Intended to permanently, globally specify each event. Should be generated at the creation of the event to ensure consistency even if data is reprocessed.
Event ID
Optional numeric reference to an event definition (see below). If not provided, defaults to 0
.
Type
Indicates how the event should be viewed and interpreted. The options are defined by XINA.
Level
Indicates how the event should be viewed and interpreted. The options are defined by XINA.
Label
Required plain text description of the event. Limited to to 128 bytes for indexing.
Content
Optional plain text, HTML, or JSON of unlimited length.
Meta
Optional JSON object of arbitrary additional content.
Types
XINA defines a fixed set of standard event types, each with an associated numeric code. The type is stored as the code in the database for performance reasons; for practical purposes most actions can use the type name directly, unless interacting directly with the API.
Standard Types
Code | Name | Ins | Int | Description |
---|---|---|---|---|
0 |
message |
✓ | ✓ | Basic event, ID optional |
1 |
marker |
✓ | ✓ | Organized event, ID required |
2 |
alert |
✓ | ✓ | Organized event, ID required, level (severity) required |
2000 |
test |
✓ | Discrete test period, may not overlap other tests, ID optional | |
2001 |
activity |
✓ | Discrete activity period, may not overlap other activities, ID optional | |
2002 |
phase |
✓ | Discrete phase period, may not overlap other phases, ID optional | |
2010 |
filter |
✓ | Filter state | |
3000 |
data |
✓ | ✓ | General purpose data set |
3001 |
spectrum |
✓ | ✓ | General purpose spectrum data |
Additional types will be added in the future as needed, with codes based on this chart:
Standard Type Code Ranges
code | ins | int | description |
---|---|---|---|
0-999 |
✓ | ✓ | General types for instants and intervals |
1000-1999 |
✓ | General types for instants only | |
2000-2999 |
✓ | General types for intervals only | |
3000-3999 |
✓ | ✓ | Data set types for instants and intervals |
4000-4999 |
✓ | Data set types for instants only | |
5000-5999 |
✓ | Data set types for intervals only |
Definitions
As with mnemonics, events may be identified with event definitions. However, unlike mnemonics, not every event requires a definition. The event ID field associates an event with an event definition.
Each event ID is associated with a unique name, describing the definition. These work similarly to mnemonic names for purposes for definition creation. If an event is inserted with an unrecognized name, a new definition will be created for that name and assigned a new event ID.
Streams
For events sourced from telemetry data it is recommended to employ event streams. This feature creates an additional database alongside the event database, tracking each event change as an individual record. Event streams address two primary issues with events sourced from telemetry data.
Cross Archive Intervals
For intervals to span across archives, event streams support open
and close
operations, which create an initially open interval (with a start time but no end time) and subsequently close the interval (setting an end time). Additionally, interval bins can only be generated for cross archive intervals with an event stream database.
Preserving Manual Changes
Telemetry sourced event data may periodically need to be reprocessed, which generates a clean data set in XINA. This will erase any user-applied changes to event records, unless an event stream is used. The extraction process can apply all user changes automatically when processing occurs.
Limitations
Event databases configured with an event stream employ certain restrictions to ensure consistent and predictable outcomes. Change operations (except insert
and open
) are limited to a single event, and bound to that event UEID. Event start and end times cannot be updated manually, as this would break consistency across other databases.
Processing
Event databases configured for streams are tightly coupled to the archives in their associated pipe.
Given archives t0 and t60, and two events, A from 10-30, and B from 50-70:
- archive t0 generates two actions:
- STRUCT EVENT INSERT (A) at t30
- STRUCT EVENT OPEN (B) at t50
- archive t60 generates one action:
- STRUCT EVENT CLOSE (B) at t70
Data Formats
The data
event type indicates a basic data set. This is typically used with the single file per event database structure, in which case the file will contain the data set. For event databases without files, the data is expected to be stored in the content
field. This is only recommended for small datasets (less than 1MB).
Files must be either ASCII or UTF-8 encoded. New lines will be interpretted from either \n
or \r\n
. The conf
object may define other customization of the format:
Conf Definition
Key | Value | Default | Description |
---|---|---|---|
delimiter |
string |
auto detect (',' , '\t' , ';' ) |
value delimiter |
quoteChar |
character |
" (double quote character) |
value quote character |
ignoreLines |
number |
0 |
number of lines to skip before the header |
invalid |
null , 'NaN' , number |
null |
preferred interpretation of invalid literal |
nan |
null , 'NaN' , number |
null |
preferred interpretation of 'Nan' literal |
pInfinity |
null , 'Inf' , number |
null |
preferred interpretation of positive 'Infinity' literal |
nInfinity |
null , 'Inf' , number |
null |
preferred interpretation of negative 'Infinity' literal |
utc |
boolean |
false |
if true , interpret all unzoned timestamps as UTC |
Starting after the number provided for ignoreLines
, the content must include a header for each column, with a name and optional unit in parentheses. Special standard unit names may be used to indicate time types, which will apply different processing to the column:
Unit | Description |
---|---|
ts |
text timestamp, interpretted in local browser timezone (absent explicit zone) |
ts_utc |
text timestamp, interpretted as UTC timezone (absent explicit zone) |
unix_s |
Unix time in seconds |
unix_ms |
Unix time in milliseconds |
unix_us |
Unix time in microseconds |