Introduction

This section gives specific details on the configuration and operation of the BSAPScanner.

The following symbol indicates a reference to the specified section in section 4 of the RTAP/Plus Integration Manual §.

The Bristol Babcock Synchronous/Asynchronous Communication Protocol (BSAP) is as defined in "Network 3000 Communication Application Programmer's Reference Issue: February, 1997".

The BSAPScanner requires that OpenBSI version 3.1 or greater be already installed on the machine in which the scan task will be run. The OpenBSI runtime should be purchased separately from Bristol Babcock and is not supplied as part of the scan task.

Use the OpenBSI utilities to configure the "communication lines" to the Bristol Babcock RTU's. The scan task does not provide any communication configuration capabilities. The name of the "communication line" used in the OpenBSI utilities are the same name as the RTAP communication ports point name.

Because the scan task connects to the OpenBSI utilities using the RTAP communication port's point name, do not make the name of the OpenBSI "communication line" longer than 19 characters.

Use the OpenBSI utilities to configure the "retry count" and "timeout" values.

The OpenBSI "timeout" value must be less than the RTAP poll frequency in order for the scan task to receive timeout events.

The BSAPScanner supports both polled and spontaneous report by exception (SRBX) requests.

The scan task will optimize the requests by using MSD (Master Signal Directory) number if the optimize attribute is set to one or two; otherwise the scan task will use symbolic names for all requests. If the optimize attribute is set to two, the scan task will always request for the signal MSD values on startup using the signal name, and then request for the signal values via MSD. Use this mode for RTU's that do not support the retrieval of MSD load version (older firmware versions). The scan task will also retrieve the MSD load version when requesting for data values via MSD or array values. The scan task will then check to see if the MSD load version has changed and re-initialize. An optimize value of three will cause the scan task to behave the same as a value of two; except that the MSD values will not be requested for initially (unless the MSD version number is zero).

When using an optimize value of two, the scan task is not able to request for the MSD load version for list requests. Therefore, when using this optimization value, the scan input table should be configured to read at least one signal or array value.

The scan task uses some special CE functions for transferring Bristol Babcock RTU alarm information into the RTAP database via the SSMA (see Special CE Functions).

In this release, not all of the functionality is available as part of the scan input/output tables. Specifically, the following items are not supported: reading of raw I/O reading/writing of memory data

Writes of data can be accomplished using one of the following methods:

1. Send just the data to the scan task. In this method, the outgoing BSAP message will use the "write mask" value specified in the scan output table as the write descriptor value.
   
2. Send a vector of two values. In this method, the outgoing BSAP message will use the first value as the write descriptor value and the second value as the outgoing value. Note that this method will always use the given first value as the write descriptor value and ignore the "write mask" value specified in the scan output table.

UNIX Only For serial connections, the scan task must be setup for PRBX. The frequency determines how often a poll request message is sent to the RTU to retrieve data. Use the following steps for failover: set the ip index attribute send the scan task an rtUSER_MESSAGE message The scan task will close it's current IP connection and attempt to connect to the new connection specified by the "ip index". The above failover will work for both IP based RTU connections as well as serial terminal server connections.