Performance improvement for remote event opening

For the client side having Remote Database API 4.4.x.x or later, and the server side having IMS Database Server 2014-04-04 or later, an experimental batch seismogram retrieval mode is now available that is aimed to greatly speed up opening such remote events from Trace. The new retrieval protocol is also used by an experimental copy of the event copier tool in Trace.

A test using a particularly large (~190 site) event showed a speed-up of well over an order of magnitude. Independent tests of this is encouraged.

Event Query Templates

Here’s an update about an upcoming feature that will start showing its head in several places (Trace, Vantage, the command line event exporters …). In various cases, a customer may want to export a simpler format than normal EVP, such as just including event time, location and local magnitude. The new “Event Query Templates” option allows you to preconfigure these export templates (basically, collections of formatted columns) to allow re-use of them later.

The template editor is reached via the “Data” menu (if the necessary Template and Template Definition modules are installed)
templates001

which leads to the following editor (similar to editing parameter filters):

templates002

Note that it is possible to add/remove columns from the list (the standard templates marked with a tick are read-only) and add new templates of your own. While very similar to filter editing, one important new feature is the ability to reorder columns, which can be done by dragging them inside their list of columns.

Now, the plan is that this set of per-machine queries can be saved and subsequently shared between various software. At the moment only Vantage uses it, but in future Trace and the command line exporters will also be able to use these saved templates (raw position on disk: ~/.ims/templatedef/**).

To use them in Vantage, right-click on your filtered event set, and explore the Export menu. The standard as well as your customised query templates should then be available as options, as seen below:

template003

 

Note that the query templates is planned to only export to CSV formats – thus forcing them to be spreadsheet-friendly by default.

 

Platform 7.4

NetBeans Platform 7.4 has been released, and this means that yet again a major version of the underlying infrastructure of all our main graphical applications (Synapse, Trace, Vantage, Ticker3D, Neuron, …) is underway. Thus, a major set of updates should become available in the next few hours, that makes some significant underlying changes.

Usually, this is mostly improvements, with potentially a few small surprises. Notable improvements in the 7.4 platform is improved proxy support, as well as a new connection tester, as is available under Tools->Options->General:

proxy_testing_settings

One known temporary side effect of the 7.4 upgrade is that the link to the Properties window at Window->Properties is now at Window->IDE Tools->Properties – this will be corrected in a future update.

Suppression of types of mac address retrieval (updated)

We’re observing a potential issue with mac address retrieval on Windows machines, especially those with custom VMs installed that creates various virtual extra mac addresses. In the main test case, Vantage spent more than 10 seconds querying the list of mac addresses.

As an experimental workaround (that could cause less mac addresses to be seen – be warned for licensing purposes), one could add a

-J-Dims.suppress.native.macaddresses=true

or

-J-Dims.suppress.java.macaddresses=true

to your ims_<app>.conf file in C:\IMS\ims_<app>\etc\ims_<app>.conf . Importantly, only turn off one of the types of mac address checking – otherwise your licenses cannot be validated. The aim of this experiment is to determine which type of checking is more efficient. Additionally, an internal caching layer for mac address retrieval has been added – the hope is that this could improve startup (and initial license check time) significantly.

This option is available for IMS Commons 3.10.19.4.51 and later.

Site Filters in Config Editor

In recent versions of the Config Editor (bundled with Synapse) it is possible to

  • mark sites as dummy sites (not by name, but by using a flag in the property sheet)
  • define an explicit start time (time of installation) and end time (time site was decommissioned) that define the lifetime of the site

When these properties are set, it is possible to have filtered views of the entire site list when right-clicking on the “Sites” node – note the two new checkable menu items.

sites_filter_config_editor