System management mode enhancements – Echelon LNS User Manual

Page 29

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LNS Programmer's Guide

15

channel. In this case, you can modify the DeviceValidation property to bypass parts of

the validation process, and reduce the time it takes to commission those devices.

You should be aware that if parts of the validation process are disabled, the risk of

network configuration problems due to inconsistent device settings will increase. If you
disable the validation process, you should be sure that the Channel and ProgramId

properties of the AppDevice objects using the device template have valid settings before

commissioning, upgrading or replacing those devices. Skipping this validation, and then

commissioning a device with the wrong interface may make subsequent communication

with the device impossible. Note that you can also use this property to force a validation
check of a device, by setting the DeviceValidation property to perform all validation

steps, and then re-commissioning the device.

In addition, the SelfDocConsistency property has been added to the
DeviceTemplate object. This property determines how much LNS will assume about

the self-documentation of devices that are using the device template. This affects how

LNS will read the self-documentation data of those devices, and what level of program
interface validation LNS will perform when commissioning those devices. Some settings

of this property allow LNS to assume higher degrees of self-documentation consistency

among devices using this template, and cause LNS to operate more efficiently when
updating those devices during the commissioning process. However, these settings may

cause problems if the device developer has produced multiple devices that have the same

program ID, but use different self-documentation strings or formats, as version 3.3 of the
LonMark Application-Layer Interoperability Guidelines allows.

For more information on device commissioning, and on the features described in this

section, see Commissioning Devices on page 121.

System Management Mode Enhancements

Several changes have been made to enhance the LNS operation when the system
management mode (MgmtMode property) is set to lcaMgmtModeDeferConfigUpdates.

Before considering these changes, you should note that new names for the system

management mode settings have been provided in Turbo Edition. The old names still
exist in LNS for compatibility reasons, but the documentation refers only to the new
names. The new

lcaMgmtModeDeferConfigUpdates

value maps to the old lcaOffNet

value, and the new

lcaMgmtModePropagateConfigUpdates

value maps to the old

lcaOnNet value.

When the system management mode is set to lcaMgmtModeDeferConfigUpdates, all

network configuration changes caused by your application will be applied to the LNS

database, but not to the physical devices on the network. Prior to LNS Turbo Edition,
these changes would be queued and then applied to all the physical devices as soon as
the network management was set back to lcaMgmtModePropagateConfigUpdates.

However, as of LNS Turbo Edition, you can call the new
PropagateDeviceConfigUpdates() method on a device to apply configuration

changes that affect only that device (such as configuration property values) to the device
without changing the system management mode back to
lcaMgmtModePropagateConfigUpdates. This may be useful if you have configuration

changes pending for a large number of devices, and only want to apply them to a subset
of those devices. This method will not propagate updates that affect multiple devices,

such as changes to addresses or connections.

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