Monthly log files

Please see Standard log files, Extra Sensor Files, Air_Link_Log.txt, Month.ini, or Monthlyalltime.ini, as relevant.

Please be aware that all of the above links lead to documentation about files that may be described as monthly log files when reading individual Cumulus forum and wiki references.

For the original Cumulus software (Cumulus 1 and 2), the name "monthly log" was most frequently used as a collective term for the last two files linked above.

When Steve Loft was working on his MX Beta, he decided to implement within MX functionality the database schema that Mark Crossley had designed on this page, where Mark selected the name Monthly for the table. David A Jamieson created versions 1.0 and 1.1 of ImportCumulusFile for creating a single table called dayfile, but Mark extended it to cover realtime and what he called monthly log files. That means the standard log can in MX optionally feed data into a database table called Monthly by default in MX. The terminology is misleading as that database table is not organised by month in any way, a single table contains every logged line that has been inserted into it by ExportMySQL.exe or CumulusMX.exe.

Anyway, as Mark Crossley has taken over development of MX, the terminology "monthly log" is now being used for the first linked file (standard logs) instead of for month.ini' the file that is truly logging monthly extremes. This MX practice is a misleading naming for novices as a line does not represent a month (in the way each dayfile line represents a day), the name has been adopted because a new log file is started for each month. Further more the practice leaves "month.ini" without a descriptive name.

As already pointed out, there is possible confusion because the last two links do contain monthly data in each line, just like the daily summary log file contains daily data in each line.

The original Steve Loft terminology for each of the log files, when they were first introduced in his original Cumulus software has been adopted throughout the documentation, to avoid possible future confusion for those looking at older articles in this wiki or oldest posts on the forum. It is probable that newcomers to Cumulus will prefer to use the terminology used in this documentation, where files are named based on their content.

Enhancement never implemented

Steve Loft was several times asked if he could change the design of his software and what it stored inStandard log files, Extra Sensor Files and the other files.

All these files currently periodically store spot readings. Some of the competition in weather software, periodically store the highest and lowest since the previous line was stored.

One advantage of the alternative approach is that you never lose any extremes. Another advantage is the alternative allows people to report extremes for parts of days. For example, some people wanted 9 am to 9 pm reported separately to night time extremes, in other nations, the dividing time was 3 pm not 9 pm.

Steve Loft would respond he had made many design decisions that were not ideal, but the software was based on his own needs. If people wanted drastic changes, they should do what he had done, and write software that did what suited them.