README

Brahms Agent Viewer version 1.8 

5/28/2008
Copyright (c) 1998-2008 NASA Ames Research Center. All Rights Reserved.


Table of Contents:

I. Welcome
II. Installation Notes
III. What's New
IV. Known Problems
V. Revision History
VI. Important Notes
VII. Contacting the Brahms development team for Technical Support

I. Welcome!

Welcome to NASA's Brahms Agent Viewer 1.8 for Windows 2000, XP, Linux and Mac OS X. Please take a few minutes to read this file, which contains the latest information regarding this release.

II. Installation Notes

The Brahms Agent Viewer is installed as part of the Brahms Agent Environment as a plug-in for the Brahms Composer. In order to use the Brahms Agent Viewer you are required to install MySQL 5.0.51 or better http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html#downloads  (MySQL 4.1.x is also still supported and can be downloaded from http://downloads.mysql.com/archives.php?p=mysql-4.1). We recommend the use of MySQL 5.0. History files generated by the Brahms virtual machine can only be parsed into a MySQL database. 

III. What's New

This new release now requires a username/password to connect to a MySQL database server to create, view, and delete databases. The username/password information is defined in Brahms/AgentEnvironment/config/agentviewer.cfg. The default username/password used by the agent viewer is brahms/brahms. When the agent viewer has a problem logging in it will automatically display a login dialog to allow you to change/enter the necessary login credentials. The login dialog can also be displayed via File->Agent Viewer->Database Settings.... When the 'Remember' checkbox is checked any changes you make in the settings are saved in the agentviewer.cfg file. The username and password are encrypted and encoded in the configuration file. The tool used to encrypt/encode a username/password is encpwd located in the Brahms/AgentEnvironment/bin directory. For details on how to setup the brahms user in MySQL see the Important Notes.

The previous included two communication views, a star communication view and a directed communication view. These views are by default disabled, i.e. show no data, but can be enabled by toggling the communication view toggle (Options->Toggle Communication View Updates). Each view has some controls allowing to control how the data is laid out. The views displays the communication between the actors for the time window shown in the timeline view. Be aware that zooming all the way out in the timeline view and enabling the communication views comes with a severe performance penalty if a lot of communications occurred within that time window. It is recommended to zoom in to an appropriate level before enabling the communication views. The communication views dynamically update when enabled when sliding the timeline in the timeline view to show the communications of the visible time window. 

IV. Known Problems

  1. In order to zoom in on an area of the agent time line, you need to center the area to be zoomed in the time line view. The zoom function zooms in on the area in the center of the time line view. The zoom function does not yet support zooming in on a particular area in the time line view.
  2. If a large number of communications are present within a time window in the timeline view and the communication views are enabled view updates may be sluggish. To resolve this disable the communication view updates (Options->Toggle Communication View Updates).
  3. If you installed MySQL 4.1.x or 5.0.x you can see incredibly long history file parse times. The reason is that by default the MySQL installer sets the database engine to InnoDB and not MyISAM. Open the my.ini file in the MySQL installation directory and change the following property 'default-storage-engine' from InnoDB to MyISAM. Restart the MySQL service and the performance will dramatically improve.

V. Revision History

The revision history for the Brahms Agent Viewer can be found in  the file named Changes.

VI. Important Notes

  1. This version of the Brahms Agent Viewer requires MySQL. MySQL is not included in this software package because of licensing restrictions. In order to use the Brahms Agent Viewer you first need to download and install MySQL version 5.0.51 Community Server or better. You can download MySQL from: http://www.mysql.com
  2. Once installed make sure to change the default storage engine used by MySQL from InnoDB to MyISAM. Open the my.ini file in the MySQL installation directory and change the following property 'default-storage-engine' from InnoDB to MyISAM. Restart the MySQL service and the performance will dramatically improve.
  3. The Agent Viewer is setup by default to access the MySQL server using the username of 'brahms' and user password of 'brahms'. If you wish to use these defaults you must create this user in MySQL and assign it the appropriate privileges.
    a. Start mysql in a terminal or command console
    -> mysql -u root -p
    -> Enter password: <enter your root password>
    b. Execute the following commands:
    mysql> use mysql;
    mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'brahms'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'brahms';
    This will allow the brahms user working on the system on which the database is running to create databases, delete databases, and perform all necessary queries on all databases.
    c. Under RedHat Linux systems the localhost hostname is broken and requires localhost.localdomain to be used. To enable the privileges for that system enter:
    mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'brahms'@'localhost.localdomain' IDENTIFIED BY 'brahms';
  4. If you setup a different username/password for MySQL you can either start Composer and go to File->Agent Viewer->Database Settings..., then change the username and password in the opened dialog, make sure 'Remember' is checked and press ok. This will store the new credentials encrypted in the agentviewer.cfg file. If you wish to modify the agentviewer.cfg file directory, make sure to use the encpwd tool located in AgentEnvironment/bin to encrypt and encode your username and password and to store the encrypted results in the configuration file.

VII. Contacting the Brahms project team for Technical Support

In case you have problems with the installation or questions and problems with the use of the Brahms Agent Viewer you can reach Technical Support at:

E-mail: support@agentisolutions.com
www: http://www.agentisolutions.com/support/support.htm

Thank you for trying the Brahms Agent Viewer. We hope you find it useful in your modeling and agent development efforts. 

Sincerely,

The Brahms Development Team