The browser window destined for showing the database information is divided into two unequal parts each of which is confined inside its own frame. These are the menu region which hosts the database access control elements (at the left), and the data region where all diagnostic messages, numerical tables and graphical distribution plots will be presented (at the right). Just after window opening, the data region is commonly empty.
Generally, before to initiate any database information request one should select the name of the detector device of interest in Installation combo-box which is placed in the upper string of menu region; at that, another Channel group combo-box will be filled automatically with corresponding list of informational channels, one of which should be selected also. After selecting any group of channels the text field Channels is filled, automatically again, with a textual list of sequential numbers of these channels. When necessary, one may edit the list inside the Channels field to eliminate the numbers of channels which are not needed for in resent moment.
When the check-box Sum beside the Channels field is active, all the digital counts which correspond to channel numbers set in the latter will be summed before the printing any table of their contents. Otherwise, with the Differentiate check-box active the content of each subsequent channel will be subtracted from the content of each preceding one.
Depending on specific situation, the elements Installation, Channels, Sum, Differentiate may be either present or absent in the menu currently shown but the general request control principle always remains the same.The time space to limit the requested data with should be defined inside the two groups of textual fields, Since and Until, where the dates of the beginning and the end of the period of interest are to be set in the format "DAY-MONTH-YEAR". Internal text of these fields may be changed either immediately from the keyboard or with the use of the < and > buttons placed beside. Before to send any information request to database server, the content of the Since and Until fields is checked for its correctness from the viewpoint of possible date representation; in the case when these data occur not correct no request is sent and a diagnostic message appears.
The database information accepted from server may be presented in different modes in dependence on following controls which are always present in the menu:
Often, the measurements at the Tien Shan station are going on with a rather high temporal resolution (of 1-10 s) continuously during some months or years; with same resolution the data counts are stored in database. When selecting the data, the subsequent counts may be summed (or averaged) to enhance statistics of each data point presented in the request result. The number of different original counts to sum in a single data point shown in resulting table or plot may be set in the text field Points to sum.
N o t e ! The size of data chunk transmitted over the net and the time spent for complete operation of a database request depend strongly on the number of data counts which are summed in a single resulting point. When requesting the data with a highest possible temporal resolution, about 1-10 s, the total time lapse set in the Since and Until fields should not be too long (no more than 1-2 days); the data with resolution of the order of minutes or hours may be requested at once over the period of some months long. At that, NO PRELIMINARY CHECK of the awaited data volume to transmit is made automatically before sending the request so any care for admissibility of the data chunk size remains on the user.
After setting of the all necessary parameters a database information exchange may be initiated by clicking the Request button. After that, the program checks the correctness of the data set with menu control elements and send them to server. If the latter can not find any information which corresponds to specified time period, or in the case of any other error, it returns an empty page with a corresponding diagnostic message which will be printed out in the data region of browser window.