SirScan browsing of the journal

Output from the journal scan is placed in a special data structure, and you are transferred to a browse session.

If SirScan is in auto refresh mode — that is, the user left Interval blank on the specification screen — SirScan places newly formatted journal entries into the data structure every time the user requests a forward scroll past the end of the current data.

Browsing the formatted journal output

The body of this screen presents the journal information returned from the user's SirScan request. The following commands and PF keys are valid:

Commands

ALL searchstring	Limits the display to lines containing the string searchstring. Typing ALL with no searchstring returns the user to viewing the entire selection of journal entries as originally specified. To limit based on a string ending or beginning with blanks, use slashes to delimit the string, for example: ALL / searchstring /
USER unum	The USER command limits the display to only those lines associated with the indicated usernumber. This is very similar to specifying ALL /unum/, except that, with the USER command, lines not associated with the the user number that happen to have the number in them for some other reason are suppressed. Also, continuation lines for entries associated with the indicated user are likely to be suppressedfor the ALL command, but will not be for USER. An effect similar to the USER command can be achieved by moving the cursor down to a line associated with the required user and pressing the Enter key. This is different from the USER command in that entries are limited to the login sessionassociated with the entry over which the cursor was positioned. This facility is dependent on M204.0352 messages appearing in the journal. If these are MSGCTL'ed to NOAUDIT, cursor-position based user selection will behave the same as USER command based selection.
PFKEYS ON | OFF	PFKEYS allows the user to turn on or off the display of the messaage line and the two lines with PF key descriptions. If PFKEYS OFF is specified, the three extra lines are used to display formatted journal data.
SCALE ON | OFF	Turns on or off a two-line character scale display. If the scale is turned off, the extra two lines are used to display formatted journal data.
RIGHT x	Scrolls the display x characters to the right.
LEFT x	Scrolls the display x characters to the left.
F xxxx or /xxxx	Finds the string xxxx in the formatted audit trail data beginning at the current line.
-F or -/	Same as above, but performs the search backward form the current line.
M (with PF7, 8, 10 or 11)	Scrolls the display the maximum number of lines up or down, or the maximum number of characters left or right.
L xxx	Moves the current line to the requested line number xxx.

PF Keys

PF1	Accesses full-screen help.
PF2	On/Off toggle for the horizontal scale.
PF3	Quit to SirScan specification screen.
PF4	On/Off toggle for the PF key display.
PF5	Scroll up an Interval (only active if an Interval was specified on the previous screen).
PF6	Scroll down an Interval (only active if an Interval was specified on the previous screen).
PF7	Scroll up.
PF8	Scroll down.
PF9	Repeat the last command.
PF10	Scroll left.
PF11	Scroll right.

When entries are displayed with dates, the dates are in YYMMDD format. When entries are displayed with times, the times are displayed in HHMMSS format.

For journal entry type selection, the following types of entries might be displayed (each type may be included or excluded from the display by switches on the previous screen):

Entry	Description
AD	General Model 204 status messages.
CI	Physical input line from user terminal or IFAM argument.
CP	Physical input line from a procedure.
CS	A physical line from full screen input.
ER	A Model 204 error message.
LI	A logical input line from user terminal or Model 204 Host Language Interface argument.
LP	A logical input line from a procedure.
LS	One input value from a SCREEN, or a menu selection number of a MENU.
MS	A Model 204 information message.
OI	An input line from the operator's console.
OO	An output line to the operator's console.
RK	Information about system initialization or to record a call to a Host Language Interface function.
ST	Miscellaneous statistics.
US	Information audited on a SOUL Audit statement.

Auto-refresh mode

When no time interval was specified on the scan specification screen SirScan browsing occurs in auto-refresh mode. This means that every time an attempt is made to go beyond the end of the current formatted records, SirScan formats a new interval of records from the last time it formatted records to the current time. Going beyond the end of current formatted records could occur because of an attempt to scroll beyond the current set of records, an attempt to position beyond the current set of records, or a search for a string that is not found in the current set of records. In addition, if any display is about to contain some empty lines, an auto-refresh is done to see if the lines can be filled in.

Auto-refresh mode is a convenient way of monitoring things as they happen. A typical thing to do with SirScan is to specify a start time of -0, which means start "now" with no time-interval size. The browse screen is then entered and the user could then initiate the action being monitored and, because auto-refresh automatically populates the screen with newly written journal records, see what's being logged to the journal without leaving the browse screen.

Ordinarily, auto-refresh mode is fairly efficient; however it should be kept in mind that if the system SCANTIME parameter is set and the "read extra SCANTIME seconds" field on the scan selection screen was set to Y, then an extra SCANTIME seconds of journal will be read on every auto-refresh.

This is not to say that users should set the indicated parameter to N when in auto-refresh mode. Quite the contrary. Without that parameter set to Y, the behavior of auto-refresh could be very confusing indeed. It should just be kept in mind that the use of the SCANTIME data will perhaps add a little extra delay and overhead to auto-refresh processing, especially on very busy systems with heavy journal activity. Auto-refresh mode on such systems will tend to be somewhat sluggish anyway, so the addition of the SCANTIME data scan would probably still not produce dramatic delays, unless SCANTIME is set to an absurdly high value.

See also

• SirScan
• SirScan setup
• SirScan scan specification
• SirScan browsing of the journal
• SirScan date processing