9.561 RX-LineSettings-CDB-DBonly

The RX-LineSettings-CDB logical device controls the basic parameters of an IRD and an input switch for the IRD which selects frequency band and polarization. The device complements the TX-LineSettings-CDB logical device which provides a similar function for transmit chains.

This is a special version of the device, which provides only access to the database.

Heart of the RX-LineSettings-CDB device is a central database (CDB) storing the line settings for all satellite channels used in the system. In a NMS environment the database is located in the NMS server, providing an synchronization mechanism which creates local (read-only) copies of the database for offline operation of the VLCs. In a NMS environment, the sat-nms client software looks up the channel lists directly at the NMS database server which significantly reduces the amount of data which has to be exchanged between NMS and VLC. In a M&C environment the CDB is located at the M&C server, no synchronization is required in this case.

Device window pages

The following table shows which device window pages are available with this individual device type. Tool-bar functions not mentioned here are described at the general description of device windows .

• --- The line settings database editor page.
• --- The device info page.
• --- The maintenance page. The configuration parameters from this page are described below.

Operation (database edit)

With this page of the device window of the RX-LineSettings-CDB device channel definitions are edited, copied or deleted. All RX-LineSettings devices in a sat-nms NMS share one common channel database located at the NMS server. The VLC containing the RX-LineSettings-CDB device requires an online connection to the NMS central database in order to make any changes to the database. Selecting channels at this page or changing any channel parameters do not change the receiver settings.

• Change certain parameters of a channel:
  1. Select the channel to modify
  2. Edit the settings
  3. Click 'SAVE'Please note that if you change the channel name (composed of the satellite / channel id entries), this will store a new channel definition with the modified data, the old channel is kept unchanged in the database.The channel name may consist of letters (a-z, A-Z), digits, space characters and some punctuation characters (,.-_). All other characters are turned to underscore characters when the channel gets stored.
• Save the actual receive settings as a new channel:
  1. Click 'READ' to fill the fields from actual receive settings.
  2. Optionally complete the transmit parameters for the channel.
  3. Enter the desired satellite / channel name.
  4. Click 'SAVE'
• Delete a channel:
  1. Select the channel to delete
  2. Click 'DELETE'

Local database copy

The following paragraph only applies to NMS installations. M&C installation manage their CDB locally at the M&C server and do not require a local copy of the data.

sat-nms VLCs may be operated locally by connecting an M&C client directly to the VLC. This may be used as a backup operation mode in cases where the NMS server is down or unreachable. To uphold the RX-LineSettings-CDB functionality even in this backup case, the VLC maintains a local copy of the channel database. This copy is used if the CDB at the NMS is unreachable. You cannot edit the channels in this local backup copy, but you can apply stored channels to the IRD.

There are two ways to update the local copy of the channel database at the VLC:

1. At the "Database" page of the device window of a RX-LineSettings-CDB device click "VLC UPD". This requests the complete database contents from the NMS server and stores it locally.
2. Administrators may configure a VLC to update the local database copy in regular intervals. To make a VLC upadate it's local database copy automatically, add a line cdb.channels.syncInterval=#.# to the file vlc.properties and restart the VLC. '#.#' is the time interval in hours.

EBU DREAMS channel list import

The channel database is capable to import channel lists from the EBU DREAMS software. The DREAMS channel lists are distributed as two CSV tables, on for RX and one for TX. In the sat-nms channel database these lists get merged. EBU channels are marked "read-only" in the database, they only may be changed by importing a new EBU channel list.

To import a pair of EBU channel lists, click the "IMPORT" button at the "Database" page of the RX-LineSettings-CDB device's device screen. This opens a new window where the names of the files to import must be entered. The small buttons beside the file name entry fields open a file select dialog which lets you select the file names fom the directory.

After you have set the file names, click "READ". The software reads and parses the CSV files. It also matches corresponding RX and TX channels, because the sat-nms channel database stores only one entry for each channel containing both, the RX and TX parameters.

The software reports the number channels read from each file and the number of channels matched. Sometimes the numbers slightly differ, e.g. if the original channel names in the RX and TX lists are not really identical. You have to edit and repair the original files if you want to fix this.

If you are satisfied with the parsing result, click "IMPORT". This imports the channel definitions to the sat-nms database. All existing EBU channel definitions are deleted and replaced by the new ones. The user defined channels in the database remain unchanged by this.

Please note, that this procedure copies the EBU channels directly from the client PC to the NMS server, the RX-LineSettings-CDB device is not involved in this and does not recognize the new channels immediately. This happens with the next regular update of the channel list, max 5 minutes later.

Configuration parameters

Just leave the configuration parameters empty.

Variables defined by this device driver