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Re: [pcp] spreadsheet -> pcp archive tool

To: "kenj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <kenj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [pcp] spreadsheet -> pcp archive tool
From: Greg Banks <gnb@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:01:24 +1000
Cc: "pcp@xxxxxxxxxxx" <pcp@xxxxxxxxxxx>
In-reply-to: <1280108858.2956.3.camel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
References: <1280108858.2956.3.camel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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Ken McDonell wrote:
Check out the attached man page.  This is done and working.

I'll check this into my tree later today, but this is a heads up and
request for comments.
Wow, I never thought I'd say this but...the first thing I can see wrong with this manpage is that it *over*documents things.

       from the spreadsheet columns onto the PCP data model.  The file is
written in XML (Version 1.0) and conforms to the syntax defined in the
You don't need to list the XML version here.

       them and will exit with an error message of the form

       __pmLogNewFile: "blah.0" already exists, not over-written


Really, this error message is self-evident.

MAPPING CONFIGURATION
       The mapfile contains specifications in standard XML 1.0 format.
For new XML-based formats you really ought to be providing a DTD (they're easy, see http://csharpcomputing.com/XMLTutorial/Lesson8.htm for what seems to be an adequate tutorial) or perhaps a schema (I've never done one of these, but see http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema#dev ).

timezone Set the source timezone in the PCP archive (the default is to
                 use UTC).  Example: timezone="+1100".
I assume that all timezone name formats that work with tzset() work here? If so you should say so.

       Thereafter follow one or more metric specifications of the form
       <metric>metricname</metric>.  The metric tag supports the following
If I understand your design correctly, "Thereafter" is the wrong word: a <sheet> element *contains* one or more <metric> elements.

       pmid      [...] If omitted, the PMID will be automatically assigned
by pmiAddMetric(3) and this would be the most common case.
You don't need the words "and this would be the most common case".

indom Each metric may have one or more values associated with it. If there is only ever one value, the metric is singular and
                 indom should be set to PM_INDOM_NULL which is the default
                 case when the indom attribute is omitted.
This sentence could be a little easier to read.

Otherwise indom
should be specified as 2 numbers separated by periods (.) to
                 set the domain and ordinal fields of the Instance Domain.
The other paragraphs around this one have a reference to another manpage where e.g. the fields of a pmid are explained. Something like that would be useful at this point.

The <datetime> element defines the column in which a date and time will be found to form the timestamp in the PCP archive for all the data in
       each row of the PCP archive.
Ok, but how? Column number? 0-based or 1-based? Or are columns matched 1-to-1 with <datatime>,<data> and <skip> elements in the order seen in the file? What happens if there are more columns than those elements?

--
Greg.

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