Transfer Data to the Synthesis Data Warehouse (SDW)
The Synthesis Data Warehouse (SDW) — formerly called "Reliability Data Warehouse" — is a temporary data storage location in a Synthesis repository. With the Synthesis API, you can transfer data from external sources into the SDW of a repository for use in Weibull++, ALTA or RGA standard folios.
In this tutorial, you'll create a simple solution for copying data from a Microsoft Excel® file over to the SDW. Note that the tutorial only demonstrates one particular approach for extracting data from Excel. It's for demonstration purposes only; it doesn't take efficiency into account and doesn't include any exception handling.
Prerequisites
Before you begin:
- Reference the Microsoft Excel Object Library in your code. (In Visual Studio, choose Project > Add Reference, and in the COM tab, select the latest version of the Microsoft Excel Object Library. Click OK.)
- Create a Synthesis repository for testing purposes.
- You'll also need to create a sample Excel file to complete the tutorial successfully. Copy and paste the following data to an Excel file. Be sure to select cell A1 in Sheet1 of the workbook when pasting the data. Name the Excel file, "SampleData."
Failure State | Time to F or S | Failure Mode |
F | 7380 | Cracked |
F | 4956 | Cracked |
F | 5451 | Cracked |
F | 6779 | Failed |
F | 7713 | Aging |
F | 1807 | Bending |
F | 5940 | Chafing |
F | 2071 | Arcing |
F | 8178 | Loose |
F | 3006 | Burned |
F | 1385 | Broken |
F | 2432 | No Contact |
F | 1169 | No Contact |
F | 592 | Shorted |
F | 24 | Burned |
F | 453 | Burned |
F | 382 | Burned |
F | 774 | Burned |
F | 53 | Burned |
Tutorial: Transfer Data from an Excel File to the SDW
The following example demonstrates how to transfer data from an Excel file to the Synthesis Data Warehouse (SDW). A discussion of the example follows.
A VBA version of the code sample is available here.
VB.NET Imports SynthesisAPI Imports Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel Public Module Module1 Sub Main() 'Declare a new RawDataSet object. Dim DataCollection As New RawDataSet 'Name it "New Data Collection," and then specify that 'it is for use with Weibull++. DataCollection.ExtractedName = "New Data Collection" DataCollection.ExtractedType = RawDataSetType.Weibull 'Declare a RawData object. Dim Row As RawData 'Open the Excel file. The following code assumes that the 'Excel file is saved in the C drive. Dim Excel As New Application Dim Workbook As Workbook Dim Sheet As Worksheet Workbook = Excel.Workbooks.Open("C:\SampleData.xlsx") Sheet = Workbook.Sheets(1) 'Read each row of data in the Excel file. Dim i As Integer, MaxRow As Integer MaxRow = 20 For i = 2 To MaxRow Row = New RawData 'Set the properties for the current data point. Row.StateFS = sheet.Cells(i, 1).text Row.StateTime = sheet.Cells(i, 2).value Row.FailureMode = sheet.Cells(i, 3).text 'Add the current data point to the data collection. DataCollection.AddDataRow(Row) Next i 'Close the Excel file. Workbook.Close() Excel.Quit() 'Connect to a Synthesis repository. Dim MyRepository As New Repository MyRepository.ConnectToRepository ("C:\RSRepository1.rsr11") 'Replace with name and path to test repository. 'Send the data collection to the repository. MyRepository.DataWarehouse.SaveRawDataSet(DataCollection) End Sub End Module
Discussion
Begin by creating an SDW data collection. The RawDataSet class represents the data collection. For this example, we've set it to contain data sets for Weibull++.
'Declare a new RawDataSet object. Dim DataCollection As New RawDataSet 'Name it "New Data Collection," and then specify that 'it is for use with Weibull++. DataCollection.ExtractedName = "New Data Collection" DataCollection.ExtractedType = RawDataSetType.Weibull
Next, declare a RawData object, which represents a single data point. We will use this object to represent each row of data in the Excel file.
'Declare a RawData object. Dim Row As RawData
The following section of code demonstrates one way to extract a row of data from the Excel file. First, the code opens a connection to the Excel file and specifies the active sheet (in this case, Sheet1). Then For i = 2
, it creates a new RawData
object and uses the values in row #2 of the Excel file to define the data point.
After the code finishes reading the row of data, it adds the data point to the data collection. When the code reaches Next i
, it increases i
with 1 and jumps back to the For
statement, which creates a new RawData
object to represent the data point in row #3 of the Excel sheet, and so on. The loop continues until i
reaches the specified number of rows (MaxRow). Finally, the code closes the connection to the Excel file.
'Open the Excel file. The following code assumes that the 'Excel file is saved in the C drive. Dim Excel As New Application Dim Workbook As Workbook Dim Sheet As Worksheet Workbook = Excel.Workbooks.Open("C:\SampleData.xlsx") Sheet = Workbook.Sheets(1) 'Read each row of data in the Excel file. Dim i As Integer, MaxRow As Integer MaxRow = 20 For i = 2 To MaxRow Row = New RawData 'Set the properties for the current data point. Row.StateFS = sheet.Cells(i, 1).text Row.StateTime = sheet.Cells(i, 2).value Row.FailureMode = sheet.Cells(i, 3).text 'Add the current data point to the data collection. DataCollection.AddDataRow(Row) Next i 'Close the Excel file. Workbook.Close() Excel.Quit()
Now that we've filled the data collection with the data points, the next step is to send the data collection to the Synthesis repository.
First, connect to a Synthesis repository (for details, see this tutorial.)
'Connect to a Synthesis repository. Dim MyRepository As New Repository MyRepository.ConnectToRepository("C:\RSRepository1.rsr11") 'Replace with name and path to test repository.
Then use the Repository.DataWarehouse.SaveRawDataSet method to save the data collection to the Synthesis repository, as shown below.
'Send the data collection to the repository.
MyRepository.DataWarehouse.SaveRawDataSet(DataCollection)
To verify that the data were imported, launch Weibull++, open the SDW (Home > Synthesis > Synthesis Data Warehouse) and then select the new data collection. (To view the data, you may need to display the StateTime, StateFS and FailureMode columns by right-clicking a column header and choosing Select Columns.)
Notes
In a secure database, you must have the "Create/edit/delete SDW data collections" permission in order to send a data collection to the database.
A data point (i.e., RawData object) for a Weibull++ data set typically requires the following properties:
- LastInspectedTime
- NumberinState
- StateFS
- StateTime
For an RGA data set, the properties are:
- LastInspectedTime
- StateFS
- StateTime
- TopLevelSerialNumber