General Information

When a rule is activated, Control-O waits at least INTERVAL minutes before it attempts the next activation of the rule. During the interval, the rule is "dormant."

After the interval has passed, Control-O starts to use the rule again during message and event scan.

The specified interval does not indicate an exact duration during which the rule is inactive. Therefore, an interval of 1 minute means that once the rule is triggered, it will be inactivated during the current clock minute. For example, if the rule was triggered at 10:34:55, then by 10:35:00 it is eligible to be triggered again, although only 5 seconds have actually passed since the previous triggering.

The reactivation of the rule does not occur exactly at the minute boundary because Control-O monitor is dormant most of the time and it "wakes up" every period specified by the INTERLVO parameter. When it wakes up, it checks which rules are to be reactivated. So if INTERLVO is 4 seconds, Control-O might wake up at 10:34:58 and then again at 10:35:02, so that the rule is activated only at 10:35:02.

Non-cyclic events

When specifying a non-cyclic rule, the following concepts apply:

• Activating a rule means that its state is set to ACTIVE (eligible for triggering).
• An INACTIVE rule cannot be triggered.
• Rules can be ACTIVE only between the times specified by the TIME FROM and UNTIL parameters.
• The TIME FROM, UNTIL, and INTERVAL parameters can be used to place the rule in an ACTIVE or INACTIVE state, based on the time-related parameters.

INTERVAL can be used to further limit rule activation as follows:

• If the rule is ordered not during the TIME FROM –> UNTIL period, the rule is set to ACTIVE at TIME FROM.
• At UNTIL, the rule is set to INACTIVE. It will be activated again at TIME FROM, unless the number of minutes passed between the last activation and TIME FROM is less than INTERVAL minutes. In this case, it will be activated at the last activation time + INTERVAL.
• If the rule was ordered between TIME FROM and UNTIL, it is activated immediately.
• If the rule is triggered, its state is set to INACTIVE.
• The rule is activated again INTERVAL minutes after the last time it was activated, as long as the time of day is between TIME FROM and UNTIL.

Cyclic Events

When specifying a cyclic rule, the TIME FROM parameter is used to determine the start time of the cycle. The INTERVAL parameter then determines how many minutes should lapse, that is, how many minutes Control-O should wait, before the next activation of the rule.

If the rule is ordered after the specified TIME FROM, the rule is activated immediately. In this case, the interval is based on the time of rule ordering. The cycle will occur at fixed intervals, but not at a specifically designated time.

To run a cyclic event rule at designated times, for example, at exactly 2:00, 3:00, and so on, the EVENT name prefix FIXT must be specified. Even if the rule is ordered after the specified TIME FROM, the rule will not be executed until the next interval as calculated from the starting time.

Note: When the IN conditions of a cyclic rule are deleted and later added again, the intervals are still calculated from the first ordering time of the rule and its TIME FROM. To reset the interval to the time when the IN conditions were added, set the prefix of the event name to CINT.