SirScan

SirScan is a high performance utility that allows users in a Model 204 online to browse the contents of its journal in real time.

SirScan permits ordinary users to view journal entries generated by their own online session, and it allows users in ADMIN SCLASSes to browse journal entries for any set of users. The data is displayed in a full-screen browser with powerful searching commands and filtering options.

SirScan is part of the UL/SPF family of products from Sirius Software. As with all UL/SPF products, SirScan requires the installation of the Sirius Mods, with a version equal to or higher than the SirScan version.

Overview

The installation of the Sirius Mods is required and sufficient to install and run the SIRSCAN subsystem. However, out of the wrapper, SIRSCAN has some limitations in selecting and formatting journal entries. These are caused by the fact that journal records contain only a user number and do not contain other potentially useful identifying information, such as userid, terminal ID, or IP address. So when SirScan scan specifications in the SIRSCAN subsystem are based on things like userid, IP address, or port name, there is often no way to determine whether a single journal entry is associated with the requested attributes or not.

In fact, before Sirius Mods version 6.0, selection criteria based on userid would only work for currently logged on threads, and then only for journal entries from the current session. This is because, for logged in users, SirScan can determine user number and login time. From these two pieces of information, it can be sure that all journal entries for the thread associated with a requested userid, and with a date/time stamp after the login time of the user, are associated with that user.

Outside of being very limiting — it was impossible to select journal info based on userid for non-logged in users — SirScan could also produce anomalous behavior in autorefresh mode (“Auto-refresh mode” on page 20). Because SirScan only collects data from the previous end of the interval when in auto-refresh mode, if a userid present and selected in a previous interval logged off before the data is refreshed for the new interval, none of the journal records for that user would appear between the end of the previous interval and the end of the current. Outside of the annoyance of not seeing the expected data, this could cause confusion among SirScan end-users, because a user's journal entries might seem to suddenly stop without a logoff record or any other hint as to why.

In Sirius Mods 6.0 and later, SirScan makes more of an effort to use whatever information is available in the journal to associate journal records with userids or other attributes not actually on the journal records. For example, if SirScan sees a M204.0352 message for a login, it knows that from that time on all journal records for that thread number are associated with the userid on the M204.0352 message, until the end of the interval or a M204.0352 logout message is reached for that thread.

In a similar way, SirScan can use the MSIR.0114 message, which indicates a Janus port and client IP address for any Janus server request, to associate a thread number with an IP address and port name. Unfortunately, while this approach makes it possible to use non-thread-number and non-thread-type based selection criteria for sessions that are no longer active, it also makes SirScan's behavior even more anomalous and confusing, because whether or not a journal record is selected might depend on whether or not SirScan happened to see an identifying message in the journal for that thread.

Historical journals

As of SirScan Version 7.7 and Sirius Mods 7.8, SirScan can be used to view either the journal for the current online, or the journal file for another online if it is allocated to the current online as a sequential file.

See also

All Sirius UL/SPF documentation is a available for download in PDF format at http://sirius-software.com/maint/manlist