Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

<[email protected]> · Fri, 24 Apr 2015 05:38:52 +0000

Let me point out the Diamond epicsdbbuilder, currently on github at https://github.com/Araneidae/epicsdbbuilder -- this does the opposite side of the job, generating well formed and validated databases from a Python script, using the EPICS database checking API from libdbStaticHost.so to validate against the specified dbd files as the database is built.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] [mailto:tech-talk-
> [email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael Davidsaver
> Sent: 23 April 2015 17:55
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: DBD/DB validator?
> 
> I'd second the call for a syntax check of .db files.  The fact that
> this
> gets discovered at runtime is terrible.
> 
> I can't count the number of times I've missed (and seen others miss) a
> closing quote, and then miss the error from dbLoadRecord because it
> scrolled off the top of the screen.
> 
> 
> The complicate is that all the parsers in Base are designed to work on
> full definitions.
> 
> On a .db file with only record definitions dbExpand from 3.14 gives:
> 
> > /usr/lib/epics/bin/linux-x86_64/dbExpand -I. cacount.db >/dev/null
> > Record "cnt1" is of unknown type "calc"
> 
> dbdExpand.pl from 3.15 doesn't recognize the "record" keyword.
> 
> > ./bin/linux-x86_64/dbdExpand.pl -I. cacount.db
> > dbdExpand.pl: Syntax error in 'record(calc, "cnt1") {'
> 
> 
> So I can see two courses.
> 
> 1) Modify the makefiles so that the validator can be given .dbd file(s)
> as well.  This would allow (an updated) "dbdExpand ... >/dev/null" to
> serve as a check.
> 
> 2) Write a new utility which parses, but doesn't follow include
> statements, then does as much checking as possible.
> 
> 
> Michael
> 
> 
> 
> On 04/23/2015 05:56 AM, Ralph Lange wrote:
> > Dear all,
> >
> > Ages ago I remember there was a tool called 'dbst' that could be used
> to
> > validate DBD/DB setups and that could dump DBs in a sorted,
> normalized
> > way (only non-default value fields, standard indentation) to make
> them
> > easily comparable with diff and such.
> >
> > Is dbst still around? I suppose there are more recent ways nowadays.
> > Perl/Python? Web-Service?
> > (I do like the idea of using the same library as the IOC, though...)
> >
> > What is a good way to do database validation?
> >
> > Thanks a lot,
> > ~Ralph
> >

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Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System