The simulation destination system is a type of destination system that you can use for testing by sending notification messages to a folder in a specific directory on your computer. This allows you to test the notification process very quickly.
Procedure
Create a destination system of the type simulation destination system.
Click on the Configuration tab.
Enter the following data:
Field
Description
Destination
Directory in which the notification messages are to be saved. PCo proposes a directory, for example, C:\Users\[user name]\Documents.
Choose the Browse pushbutton to search the directory and create a new folder.
If you enter NUL as the directory, the notification messages are sent but they are not saved.
Format
Selection option for the format in which the notification message file is stored. You can choose between output into an XML file or a binary file.
XML file is the default setting as only the XML format is human-readable.
File Name Composed of Time Stamp and Counter
If you select this checkbox, the file name of a notification message contains a 24-digit number that consists of a time stamp in milliseconds and a six-digit counter from 000000 to 999999. If the counter exceeds 999999, it starts afresh at 000000. The counter starts again at 000000 when you restart the agent instance.
The generated files can be sorted in a Windows Explorer window by name to clearly determine the time sequence in which the files have been generated.
Each notification message gets a unique 24-digit number at the runtime of an agent instance. If you have two or more agent instances running in parallel, you should avoid that simulation destination systems of different agent instances write to the same directory, because the uniqueness of file names between the agent instances is not guaranteed.
If you do not select this checkbox, the file name of a notification message contains its technical ID.
Sleep
Queue time (in milliseconds) of the destination system until the next notification message is accepted. You can use this to simulate a slow network connection. The notification messages that are not accepted are placed in a queue and processed from this queue.
Failures Percentage
Percentage of notification messages that should fail. This percentage is intended for simulation purposes to test the saving and processing of faulty notification messages.
If, for example, you enter 50%, half of the messages are treated as faulty messages and are displayed on the Message Retries tab. (See also: Agent Instance: Displaying Messages.)