INTEGRATED ALARM MANAGER SHARED BY MULTIPLE MONITORING PROCESSES ON AN OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE PROCESSOR
TECHNICAL FIELD The present invention generally relates to an alarm manager for processes on an Operation and Maintenance Processor (OMP), and more particularly to an integrated alarm manager allowing the monitoring processes to share an alarm handling routine in order to remove the need for each of the monitoring processes to have its own separate alarm handling routine implemented therein.
BACKGROUND ART An OMP, which is a maintenance system of an Authentication Authorization Account (AAA) server, is responsible for displaying the operational status of the server, delivering a command to a process, receiving and displaying a response to the command, and querying various data (including statistical data). Accordingly, one of the most essential functions of the OMP is to issue an alarm when an abnormal operation of the AAA server or the processor is detected. Conventionally, when an alarm is to be issued due to a crash of the monitoring process, etc., the individual alarm-handling routines for generating an alarm sound or an alarm message should be implemented at each of the monitoring processes, which frequently result in resource waste by allowing the same types of the alarms to be redundantly issued. In other words, when the same types of the alarms are detected by the different monitoring processes, each monitoring process should redundantly perform the similar alarming actions, such as opening an alarm window, generating an alarm sound, etc., in response to the detected alarm status. Therefore, an operator might encounter multiple alarm windows opened in response to the substantially same types of the alarms and then have to respond to every window by individually pushing an OK button therein, thus possibly becoming confused by the multiple windows.
DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION Therefore, the present invention is provided in order to solve the problems described above. It is an object of the present invention to provide a systematic alarm manager allowing an operator to collectively monitor the alarm condition and readily
grasp the progress of the handling of the alarm. In accordance with one aspect of the present invention for achieving the above object, there is provided an integrated alarm manager for OMP processes, wherein the integrated alarm manager comprises: an alarm list for maintaining an alarm ID, an alarm cause and alarm summary associated with the alarm ID, which are to be displayed through a Graphic User Interface (GUI); an Invoke function portion for processing an alarm request from each of the processes such that if the same type of the alarm as the requested alarm already exists in the alarm list, then the Invoke function portion ignores the alarm request and returns the corresponding alarm ID to the process or otherwise, the Invoke function portion generates a new alarm ID to add it into the alarm list and returns the newly generated alarm ID to the process and provides the alarm ID and an alarm sound generation signal; a Revoke function portion for providing an alarm ID and an alarm sound interrupt signal and deleting the alarm ID from the alarm list when a termination condition of the alarm status associated with the alarm ID is satisfied; and an alarm sound manager for generating a corresponding alarm sound in response to the alarm sound generation signal and the alarm ID from the Invoke function portion or interrupting the alarm sound in response to the alarm sound interrupt signal and the alarm ID from the Revoke function portion.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS Fig. 1 is a structure diagram of an integrated alarm manager for the OMP processes in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. Fig. 2 is a structure diagram of an alarm sound manager in an integrated alarm manager for the OMP processes in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. Fig. 3 is a flow diagram illustrating the steps for issuing an alarm at an integrated alarm manager for the OMP processes in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. Fig. 4 is a flow diagram illustrating the steps for terminating the issued alarm at an integrated alarm manager for the OMP processes in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. Fig. 5 is an exemplary display of a GUI of an integrated alarm manager for the OMP processes in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.
BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION Hereinafter, an integrated alarm manager for the OMP processes will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings according to an embodiment of the present invention. Fig. 1 is a structure diagram of an integrated alarm manager for the OMP processes in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. Alarm manager 10, which includes Invoke function portion 12, Revoke function portion 13 and alarm sound manager 14, determines whether an alarm status has occurred at each of the plurality of monitoring processes 20. When it is determined that the alarm status has occurred, each of the plurality of monitoring processes 20 invokes alarm manager 10 to collectively handle the alarm status, instead of using its own Invoke function portion 12 and Revoke function portion 13 implemented therein to generate an alarm sound and display an alarm message. In other words, as the alarm-issuing routine, which used to be implemented in each process, is allowed to be commonly shared by the monitoring processes, the alarm handling operation, such as displaying the alarm message and generating the alarm sound, can be performed by calling the shared routine within the alarm manager 10. The alarm manager may return the alarm ID associated with the issued alarm to the corresponding process. Thus, with respect to the alarm ID, the alarm manager can conduct the corresponding operations, such as interrupting the alarm sound, removing the alarm display, etc., and an operator can take the corresponding actions accordingly. The alarm ID can be implemented as a static variable in a JAVA-like language. Thus, in case that multiple instances are created in a single program, only one instance can be admitted for the variable. Accordingly, although multiple instances are created for the alarm manager, the alarm ID is recognized as having an identical value throughout all the processes. In order to provide an alarm ID independent of the processes, the alarm manager increases the value of the alarm ID by one at every alarm occurrence. The alarm manager also initializes and sets the value of the alarm ID in consideration of the capacity of the variable's data structure, such that a value overflow should not be incurred. Alarm list 14 maintains an alarm cause and an alarm summary in the form of a list, which will be displayed through the GUI. Preferably, alarm list 14 is always displayed in the main GUI of the monitoring program. In addition, it is preferred that a new item including an alarm cause and summary is inserted into alarm list 14 when an alarm has occurred and the item corresponding to the alarm ID is deleted from alarm list 14 when the alarm is revoked. Thus, the operator can find
out what caused the alarm by auditorily identifying the alarm from the alarm sound and checking alarm list 14 displayed via the GUI. As a result, even when the multiple alarms have occurred simultaneously, the operator can immediately recognize the current alarm status by checking alarm list 14 displayed through the GUI without the need to push every OK button in the individual alarm windows, hi addition, the integrated alarm manager in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention further comprises alarm recording device 15 for recording all the insertions and deletions of the alarms with the corresponding alarm IDs into a log. Accordingly, at any time, it can be identified when the alarm for a certain object has occurred and cleared. Fig. 2 is a structure diagram of alarm sound manager 11, a component of an integrated alarm manager for the OMP processes in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. Referring to Fig. 2, alarm sound manager 11 includes alarm sound list 17 and hash table 16 for the alarm sounds. While an alarm sound stored within the hash table 16 is loaded into the alarm sound list through a
MakeSoundOnce function portion and a MakeSoundLoop function portion, the alarm sound loaded into the alarm sound list 17 is deleted through a StopAllSound and a StopSound function portion. The alarm sounds are composed of wave files or other similar media files, wherein the media files are required to contain low capacity in order not to cause an overload on the program. Further, they preferably repeat a simple sound so that the alarm status can be effectively noticed. Such alarm sounds are read in the form of audio clips into the hash table during the load of the monitoring program. When an alarm occurs, alarm sound manager 11, which manages hash table 16, selects an alarm sound corresponding to a predetermined alarm level and replays the alarm sound only if the sound is not currently being replayed. Because the similar audio clip is replayed for the alarms with the same alarm levels but different alarm types, all of the alarm sounds with the same alarm types but different alarm levels cease to be replayed when one of the alarm sounds stops during the termination of the alarm. Consequently, it is necessary to rearrange the alarm sounds for keeping other alarm sounds on. The audio clip can be replayed following the steps of: interrupting all the alarm sounds, checking the alarm ID for the currently issued alarm, identifying the alarm sound associated with the alarm ID, reading the audio clip corresponding to the alarm sound from hash table 16 and loading the audio clip into alarm sound list 17. Fig. 3 is a flow diagram illustrating steps for issuing an alarm at an
integrated alarm manager for the OMP processes in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. Each process has a single corresponding alarm ID for a single alarm status. When an alarm is to be issued, each process calls an Invoke function portion of the alarm manager, passing the current alarm LO, the alarm level and the alarm cause as parameters (Sll). The alarm manager then checks alarm list 14 to determine whether the same type of the alarm that has occurred in the corresponding process already exits in alarm list 14 (SI 2). If the same type of the alarm is already in alarm list 14, the alarm manager returns the alarm ID corresponding to the process without any action taken for the alarm (S17). If the same type of the alarm is not in the alarm list 14, the alarm manager issues a new alarm and generates a new alarm ID associated with the newly issued alarm (SI 3). The alarm manager adds the new alarm into the alarm list in a predefined form, the added alarm being preferably displayed through the GUI to the operator (S14). Further, the alarm manager generates an alarm sound for the new alarm through the alarm sound manager (S 15). For the new alarm, the alarm manager builds a log of occurrence information including the alarm ID, the process where the alarm has occurred and the time when the alarm has occurred (SI 6). Then, the alarm manager provides the alarm ID to the process where the alarm has occurred (SI 7). Following the above steps, the operator can identify which alarm has occurred and which alarms remains unhandled. Moreover, the alarm manager manages the alarm sounds according to the respective alarm levels such that only if the same level of the alarm as the current alarm does not exit in the alarm list, the new alarm sound may be replayed. Fig. 4 is a flow diagram illustrating the steps for terminating the issued alarm at the integrated alarm manager for the OMP processes in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. When the termination condition is satisfied, for example, through a recovery of the stalled process into a normal operation using a recovering program or through a reset of the process, each monitoring process 20 calls the Revoke function portion (S21), thus passing the alarm ID received from the alarm manager as a parameter to the Revoke function portion. The Revoke function portion then determines whether the received alarm ID has an initial value (S22). If the alarm ID has the initial value (i.e., the alarm ID is not in the alarm list), then the Revoke function portion returns the alarm ID (S27). If the alarm ID is in the alarm list, the Revoke function portion initializes the alarm ID (S23) and deletes the corresponding alarm cause from the alarm list (S24). Further, the alarm sound is stopped through the StopAlarmSound function portion in the alarm manager, while
the alarm manager rearranges the remaining alarms, which are not terminated. Fig. 5 is an exemplary display of a GUI of the integrated alarm manager for the OMP processes in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. The display represents in the GUI the alarm cause and summary corresponding to the contents in the alarm list 14. Referring to Fig. 5, the GUI for the alarm list may include a Mute button (31) and a Stop button (32) for stopping all the alarm sounds being replayed.
INDUSTRIAL APPLICABILITY As described above, in the conventional process, when an alarm is to be issued, each monitoring process independently invokes its own alarm-handling routines, which do not allow for the efficient controlling of the whole alarm status. The present invention is intended to solve the problem by collectively managing and handling all the alarm, thereby reducing the system overhead. In other words, the collective handling of the entire alarms by the alarm manager allows each process to maintain only an alarm ID associated with the alarm status and call the Invoke or Revoke function portion with the alarm ID. This may considerably reduce the whole system overhead. In addition, since a log is maintained regarding the alarm, it can be always identified when the alarm for a certain object has occurred and be terminated.
Furthermore, the management of the alarm sounds with a hash table may eliminate the overhead, which would otherwise be created during the search for the alarm sound.