The concatFrameData User Command (Meta Macro)

All user commands have the form:

ldasJob { -name {} -password {} -email {} } { userCmd -opt1 {} ... }

Which is in the format of a Tcl command, ldasJob, with two required arguments:

1. A Tcl list of user information consisting of username, password, and e-mail address. All fields must be filled or the command will be rejected.
   Client software which would like to receive responses from the LDAS system on a port instead of through email can provide a hostname:port combination as the email argument. A further feature of this method is that the hostname can be replaced with the magic key !host!, and the LDAS system will use the IP address it finds by doing a peername lookup on the connected socket.
2. A user command in the form of a Tcl list, for which there exists a "meta" macro file which can be expanded into Tcl code which can then be evaluated by the LDAS system.
   An argument must be provided to every option field for any given command or the command will be rejected.
   Some option fields will accept a "null" argument consisting of a matching pair of braces "{}" with no interposed space.
   Meta macros consist of a prototype declaration of the arguments for the given user command, and a template describing the calling order of API specific blocks of Tcl code which are concatenated into a larger block comprising the complete request, which can then be distributed by the assistant manager for interpretation by the low level API's.
   These API specific blocks are maintained as API specific macro files consisting of immediately interpretable Tcl code.

• concatFrameData

• concatFrameData

  Returns data extracted from frames in several formats either by attaching the resulting files to an e-mail (-returnformat email) or by returning an e-mail with a URL pointing to the location of the results (-returnformat http or ftp).

  Calling convention (all on a single line):

  ldasJob   { -name   "username"   -password   "********"   -email   "user@foobar.edu"}   {concatFrameData   -returnprotocol   URL   -outputformat   data_format   -frametarget   name_of_an_api   -framequery   {Tcl list}   -compressiontype   supported_compression_mode   -compressionlevel   integer   }

  Option Descriptions:

  -returnprotocol:     http ftp mailto file

  Default: http://some_sensible_name.ext
  The argument to -returnprotocol resembles the usual browser conventions for URL's, but is actually only a hinting mechanism for the user to get a URL back in e-mail or in a client.
  The mailto option is currently unsupported.

  The http, ftp, and file options cause a URL pointer to the location of the results to be returned by e-mail. Any directory structure in the location will be ignored, the filename and extension will be used unless they are found to break system conventions for mime typing.
  The possible formats of the argument are:

  • http://filename.ext

  • ftp://filename.ext

  • file:/filename.ext

    NOTES:

    1. Embedded spaces in the argument to the -returnprotocol option will cause the request to fail.

  -outputformat:     frame ilwd LIGO_LW

  Default: "{ilwd binary}"
  The argument of the -returnformat option is the data type to use in formatting the result of the user request.
  The possible output formats which the system can produce, which include binary frames, ilwd ascii, ilwd binary and LIGO_LW (an XML format) can be specified, i.e. {ilwd ascii}.

  -frametarget:     {}

  Optional: defaults to a null string
  The argument of the -frametarget option is the name of a known LDAS API. The result output from the frame API will be registered with the named API to be used as input data for the code with the same job i.d. that the data is tagged with.
  

  -compressiontype:     {raw, gzip, gzip_diff, zero_suppress_short, zero_suppress_int_float, or zero_suppress_otherwise_gzip}

  Optional: defaults to 'gzip'
  

  Compression Name	Description
  raw	The data is not compressed.
  gzip	The data is compressed using the gzip algorithm
  diff_gzip	The data is differentiated and then gzipped
  zero_suppress_short	Data which is composed of 2 byte integers is differentiated and then zero suppressed. All other data types are left uncompressed. This mode does not imply zero_suppress_int_float.
  zero_suppress_int_float	For 4 byte integers or float data, the data is differentiated and then zero suppressed. If the data is 2 byte integers, the compression mode is modified to be zero_suppress_short. All other data types are left uncompressed.
  zero_suppress_otherwise_gzip	All data types that support zero suppress compression are compressed using that method. All other data types are compressed using gzip.

  -compressionlevel:     {}
  Optional: defaults to '1'
  This option allows the user to specify the level of compression for compression types that support multiple levels. Gzip and gzip_diff support comprssion levels 1-6, "raw" does not support any levels. If a compression type does not support multiple levels, this option is quietly ignored.
  

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