Database Tools
Mike Alsbury
dozens of test points per flight. It suddenly becomes useful to
compare a test point done on FltA to one completed on FltM. What is
the best way to harness the database tools within IADS to mine this
data. We are using the test point logs however not all test points
get flown on a specific test card. In the past we have handled this
with simple database tools like Access and Excel to capture top level
items like weight and balance at takeoff and landing coupled with
completed test points, however I would like to try and integrate this
type of test point tracking into IADS.
Jim Bretz
Yes, I understand completely. Normally this work is done outside of the Iads
products in different tools such as TEST_PLAN, custom tools developed in
Matlab or other languages, or using Excel/Access as you've mentioned. In
fact, we have built a supporting mex interface in Matlab to help facilitate
this developement. We also have an "automation interface" wrapped on top of
Iads that can be used as well in other languages (C++,C#, etc).
As you've noticed from the existing TestPoint tables, they are more oriented
towards a specific flight. Each config file represents a single flight's
worth of information, so you need yet another tool to sit above all of these
"databases" in order to give you a top level view. To tell you the truth, we
haven't actually completed the modiciations necessary to tie all of the
multi-flight test points together and allow data mining. It's definitely on
the list though. At this point in time, most customers have gone from the
other direction and integrated our output into their database.
As I mentioned before, it would be easy enough to query and collect all of
this information from the config files from the outside. You could even
query individual parameter values to capture your top level items
(takeoff/landing weight, mach, alt, keas, aircraft config, etc during the
TP) as well as the IRIG time and Flight/Test/Storage Location of data.....
so building an offline tool wouldn't be that difficult.
Do you have any idea on how you like to access the data after this "uber"
test point log has been created? In other words, do you want to be able to
jump to any specific flight's data and view it say in an AnalysisWindow (i.e
StripCharts, etc)?
As far as integrating it into Iads, it might be worth a thought to build
some kind of custom ActiveX display that would interface to the database.
There are also ways of creating custom tables inside of Iads. I'm probably
getting ahead of things. We'd probably need to talk more about how you'd
like to use this information first,
Jim
James Bretz
One more thing:
>We are using the test point logs however not all test points get flown on a
>specific test card.
When the TestPoint system was designed, I don't think we fully understood
the TestPoint vs FlightCard relationship. We didn't realize that a single
flight card could represent "N" test points, otherwise we would have
arranged the table so that the first column was the flight card and another
column represented 0..N TestPoints. That would of course open up the
necessity of having another table to track the TestPoints and their
associated FlightCards. To get around this feature, most people have been
putting their flight card into the TestPoint column.
Anyway, can you think of any thing we could do to help the situation? Also,
how would you suggest we change things to help mine the data.... and of
course, how would you like to query and view the resultant data?
Thanx,
Jim