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 order, 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. The OPC Client has 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 the OPC Client, 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 (OPC Item ID).

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 OPC Client has a unique ID. This will be used for future enhancements.

More information

Optional debug tracing.