NO UNIX Tail and Perl type question

[Stephen Miller]

Hi Cliff and Lou

Ok this is the setup. Health Integration using TCP and HL7.  The
receiver Patient Administration System has a server module listening
for messages. The message is patient data. A message broker
(Cloverleaf) passes on a channel of messages to the Server Module.
Cloverleaf expects the server to respond with an ACK or NACK basically
Ok, processed with errors, Cant process this message therefore stop
all messages for this patient or Server is having a problem - stop
sending all messages.

Well in this case the server has some built in processing errors and
is not responding at all in certain circumstances. In this situation
Cloverleaf gets a Communication error. On this basis it will stop for
a pre-determined time and then attempt to send the message that blew
up the server again - again the server blows up (in the interim it was
restarted by a script that runs on a timer and if cant find the server
running it restarts it).

The Cloverleaf GODS here say - there is nothing we can do - well as
always I take this as a challenge.

The Server writes to a log file as it processes the message and as it
checks the validity of each segment of the message. The same file is
used per day regardless of how many times it is restarted.

Ok so I can determine that the Server has failed and on what record
and what segment of the record. As there are a finite number of
segment types and the server writes before it checks the data, and
sometimes crashes, I can pattern match on the file. For example:

A successful message ends, together with the start of the next process write:

MSA Segment successfully sent

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Data received at:

A fail will read:

Validating segment: PID

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(In a successful message the log would read:

PID segment loaded
Validating segment: PID
PID segment validated)

So if I can read using the tail I can tell that the message has
crashed the server leading to the communication error.

Once I cant get this on a different process, such as Perl or whatever
then Cloverleaf can be re-programmed to

OnReceiptofCommError

Contact Perl (Perl does the tail and returns the data)
If what it returns contains :

Validating segment: PID

If Perl doesnt return anything - and in facts gives a comm error
itself - then Cloverleaf will know there is something seriously wrong.
If the Message that Cloverleaf gets back is is good then it knows the
Comms error glitch is not relevant. If however if it gets the unique
:"Validating segment: PIDchr(13)Chr(13)" then it knows this patients
record has to be quarantined.

Then Cloverleaf can act according and quarantine messages for this
patient but can continue to deliver for other Patients.

So so much for the Unix-Cloverleaf guru's saying that it is impossible

Regards

Stephen Miller






On 12/17/11, CLIFFORD ILKAY <clifford_ilkay at dinamis.com> wrote:
> On 12/16/2011 09:18 PM, Stephen Miller wrote:
>> Greetings heew is an interesting problem.
>>
>> In my rapid learning curve on UNIX I am aware that we can have a live
>> log file that can be read locally by other applications using the tail
>> command. In this case I am only interested in the last few lines of
>> the current log file. In this instance I am looking for a certain
>> string. This string indicates that the process has failed and is in an
>> unstable state.
> [snip]
>
> Hi Stephen,
>
> Can you provide more information about this process? What does it do?
> Other than writing "Good bye, cruel world!" to the log file and then
> flopping over and dying, how else can you tell that the process in
> question is contemplating hara kiri? What causes the process to fail?
> Parsing log files and notifying you after-the-fact is certainly possible
> and not that difficult but it might be feasible to be notified earlier
> of developing problems. You can think of it as a long-range weather
> forecast, "There is a 90% probability of precipitation tomorrow.", vs.
> the weatherman telling me something I could tell just looking out the
> window, "It's raining outside."
> --
> Regards,
>
> Clifford Ilkay
> Dinamis
> 1419-3266 Yonge St.
> Toronto, ON
> Canada  M4N 3P6
>
> <http://dinamis.com>
> +1 416-410-3326
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-- 
*Kind Regards

Stephen Miller

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Skype: Stephen.Miller.1958

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*Work E-mail: Stephen.Miller at health.wa.gov.au; *