I just came back to this and started to use the dummy frontend.
Unfortunately, I have a problem during run cycles: 

Starting the frontend and starting a run works fine -> seeing events with mdump and also on the web GUI. 
But when I stop the run and try to start the next run the frontend is sending no events anymore.
It get stuck at line 221 (if (status == DB_TIMEOUT)).
I tried to reduce the nEvents to 1 which helped in terms of DB_TIMEOUT but still I don't get any events after I did a stop / start cycle -> no events in mdump and no events counting up at the web GUI.
If I kill the frontend in the terminal (ctrl+c) and restart it, while the run is still running, it starts to send events again.

Cheers,
Marius

> This problem has (likely) been fixed in the current version. Please pull develop and try again. Was a recursive call to the event collection routine which is only triggered if you send events faster than 
> the logger can digest, so not many people see it.

I just pulled the current version (d945fa9) but the problem as explained in 2347 stays the same.

Best,
Marius

I finally found the problem why the readout stops after a run transition. 

In my dummy frontend the serial number was not reset to zero at run start. 
This leads to a mismatch of the serial number in the function receive_trigger_event of mfe.cxx:1247.
Which is than resulting in the problem that the function founds never a new event in all ring buffers and nothing get read out of the buffer.

Nevertheless, it would be nice that the system would tell the user that there is a mismatch in the serial number (printing a warning / error etc.). 

Cheers,
Marius

Hi all,

> I agree, I think we can safely bump the limit from 100 Mbytes to 1 Gbyte, maybe 1.5 or 
> 1.99 Gbytes. Above that we run into 32-bit/31-bit cleanliness problems.
We just went in and changed: int odb_size_limit = INT_MAX;//100*1000*1000; in odb.cxx. And we could create ODBs with 1GB and 1.5 GB.

Since the DecodeSize function in odbinit has also foreseen yottabytes ;) (const char units[] = {'k', 'M', 'G', 'T', 'P', 'E', 'Z', 'Y'};) we think going to GB for the maximum ODB size would be create.

> there is a bug in odbinit, if initial odbinit fails, ODB with default size is creates, 
> and original rejected ODB size is written to .ODB_SIZE.TXT (an inconsistency).
Can#t we go with the maximum size here if the user inputs a larger size? So just below       printf("Checking ODB size...\n"); one could check for the odb_size_limit. In general one could move the odb_size_limit to midas.h so its not only available in odb.cxx.

Best,
Marius

> This is change is wrong. As I wrote, ODB is not 64-bit clean and it is not 32-bit clean. We think is is 31-bit clean, so maximum size would be slightly less than 2 Gbytes.

I just wanted to show that changing it and creating bigger ODBs is in general possible.

My main intention was to trigger the discussion again. I also think in general 1GB is enough. But for our applications sometimes 100MB is just on the edge. 



> Congratulations. created != "it works". for proper test, you should fill it with 1.5 GB of stuff, save to json file, reload from json file, save to a different json file and compare that they have same contents (minus timestamps).

You’re right we did not properly test it. I will run this test with a 1GB ODB.



> We could spend a lot of time making odb 32-bit clean and give you 4GB-max ODB, but would it be useful? For large ODB, "save to .json" already takes a long time ("save to .xml" is slower, "save to .odb" ditto, also buggy). We already have complaints that runs take forever to start because mlogger 

> takes a long time to write the ODB save file.

I also agree that going in and making it 32-bit or even 64-bit clean is not worth the effort.

Also concerning the writing speed of the logger etc I am fully with you.

However, having the freedom to choose a bit bigger ODB would be great.



You said the writing into .odb is buggy. Do you mean it’s buggy in general or only in this specific case?

We save the ODB most of the time in the .odb format. 



Cheers,

Marius

> my vote is to bump the ODB size limit to 1999*1000*1000 (not quite 2GB). but this needs to be tested. especially save and restore from ODB, XML and JSON files, including how long it takes to save and load a 1.9GB ODB. K.O.

I had some fun with python and created a test script which can be executed in the MIDASSYS/online folder (test_odb.py). I did not really normalize the time so it will be different at different systems but I guess the trend is important (see create_time.pdf).
What is surprising to me is that even that I only write one STRING key to the time increases. Is this maybe related to what Stefan said about the run start - so that odbedit needs some time to load the bigger ODB?
Second thing is that also the creation / storing and load time is increasing. Should this be or is there a bug in the code I use or again is this related to the previous point?

The test of comparing the ODB after store / load / store already fails for the json format. I know I only test if the dicts are the same, so for timestamps this already fails.
But what is strange here is that sometimes the test works sometimes not and its different from run to run.

I will try to improve the test a bit more but for a short update this is how it looks so fare.

Best,
Marius

> At the run start mlogger writes the ODB to the .mid file. This needs conversion (binary ODB -> XML ASCII) which can take time.
> This does NOT depend on the ODB size, but on the ODB *content*. Every key in the ODB takes time to convert. So if your ODB as 1.5 GB
> but only a few keys, this is still fast. Only if you have 200 million keys int he ODB, then mlogger takes lots of time to convert
> 200 million values to XML or JSON strings.
This was also my assumption. Is this the same for odbedit -c save FILE?
Because this is what I tested with the script and there one can see in the plot that the time increases to write the file if the ODB size increases.
The content of the ODB is always the same - one STRING key in the directory Test.

Best,
Marius

> BTW, how do I resize the ODB. I remember we discussed this some time ago, and concluded that odbedit needs a resize flag. Has this even been 
> done? If not, what is the "official" way to resize the ODB. We had some documentation about that some time ago, but I can't find it anymore.

I guess this is still not done and the issue is still open: https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/329/need-odbresize
I guess if we touch this maybe the problem with the wrong size should be also fixed: https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/328/odbinit-s-1024mb-creates-odb-with-wrong

Best,
Marius

Hi,

I am writing a Rust based midas file reader however it was kind of hard to understand the full midas file 
structure from the documentation.

Only at the end of the page 
https://daq00.triumf.ca/MidasWiki/index.php/Event_Structure#MIDAS_Format_Event one finds under the 
headline “tape format” that there are special events which mark the start and the end of the run. It would 
be better to place this information more prominent maybe we a headline: “Special Events”. Maybe a link to 
this section at the top of the page could help. Also at the mlogger page there is no information about this.

Best,
Marius

> > Hi,
> > 
> > I am writing a Rust based midas file reader however it was kind of hard to understand the full midas file 
> > structure from the documentation.
> > 
> > Only at the end of the page 
> > https://daq00.triumf.ca/MidasWiki/index.php/Event_Structure#MIDAS_Format_Event one finds under the 
> > headline “tape format” that there are special events which mark the start and the end of the run. It would 
> > be better to place this information more prominent maybe we a headline: “Special Events”. Maybe a link to 
> > this section at the top of the page could help. Also at the mlogger page there is no information about this.
> > 
> > Best,
> > Marius
> 
> Ben was so kind to update the event documentation:
> 
>   https://daq00.triumf.ca/MidasWiki/index.php/Event_Structure
> 
> Please have a look and let us know if that's better now.
> 
> Best,
> Stefan

Thank you Ben! Now its super clear!

> > I am writing a Rust based midas file reader
> 
> You might find this library I wrote useful: https://crates.io/crates/midasio
> 
> It should "just work", and if it doesn't, I would be interested to know.

Nice! I did not know about this. I have now also one simple reader but yours looks much more advanced. My 
overall idea here is to connect directly to midas so having some frontend features to analyze the data etc. do 
you also have already a library for this? I can also extend your stuff.

Best,
Marius

This is not the case here. Note that the error message: "Callback received for a midas::odb object which went out of scope" is not called! The segmentation fault happens later line 96.

> The answer is in the error message: „Object went out of scope“. When your frontent_init() exits, the odb objects are destroyed. When you get a callback, it‘s linked to the
> destroyed object. This is like if you have a local string and pass a reference to that string in the return of the function.
> 
> Use a global object (bad) or use „new“ (potential memory leak). I would use a global structure which holds all odb objects.
> 
> Stefan
>  
> > 
> > last week I was running MIDAS with the commit 3ad98c5. Today I updated MIDAS and now all my watch functions are crashing. Attached I have a minimal example frontend of the problem.
> > 
> > In our software we have two functions one which sets up the ODB values of the frontend and another one which sets up all watch functions. So overall we connect two time to the ODB during fronend_init one time to create the values and one time to create the watch. In the example code a simple version of this setup is shown:
> > 
> > INT frontend_init() {
> > 
> >   cm_msg(MINFO, "frontend_init() setup", "Test FE");
> > 
> >   odb settings = {
> >     {"Test", 123},
> >     {"sub", {}}
> >   };
> >   settings.connect_and_fix_structure("/Equipment/Test FE/Settings");
> >   // settings.watch(watch); <-- this works without segmentation fault
> > 
> >   odb new_settings("/Equipment/Test FE/Settings");
> >   new_settings.watch(watch); // <-- here I am getting a segmentation fault
> > 
> >   return CM_SUCCESS;
> > }
> > 
> > When I directly set the watch everything runs fine however, when I create a new ODB object and use this one to set a watch I am getting the following segmentation fault:
> > 
> > Process 18474 stopped
> > * thread #1, queue = 'com.apple.main-thread', stop reason = EXC_BAD_ACCESS (code=1, address=0x34)
> >     frame #0: 0x000000010004fa38 test_fe`midas::odb::watch_callback(hDB=<unavailable>, hKey=<unavailable>, index=0, info=0x00006000002001c0) at odbxx.cxx:96:25 [opt]
> >    93  	      if (po->m_data == nullptr)
> >    94  	         mthrow("Callback received for a midas::odb object which went out of scope");
> >    95  	      midas::odb *poh = search_hkey(po, hKey);
> > -> 96  	      poh->m_last_index = index;
> >    97  	      po->m_watch_callback(*poh);
> >    98  	      poh->m_last_index = -1;
> >    99  	   }
> > 
> > Best,
> > Marius

Okay, but this is then a big issue IMO. For Mu3e we do this in every frontend and I also checked again all of these watches are broken at the moment (with commit 3ad98c5 they worked).
 
In the old style we did for example (see https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/src/develop/examples/crfe/crfe.cxx):

INT frontend_init()
{
   HNDLE hKey;

   // create Settings structure in ODB
   db_create_record(hDB, 0, "Equipment/Clock Reset/Settings", strcomb1(cr_settings_str).c_str());
   db_find_key(hDB, 0, "/Equipment/Clock Reset", &hKey);
   assert(hKey);

   db_watch(hDB, hKey, cr_settings_changed, NULL);

   /*
    * Set our transition sequence. The default is 500. Setting it
    * to 600 means we are called AFTER most other clients.
    */
   cm_set_transition_sequence(TR_START, 600);

   return CM_SUCCESS;
}

I thought this will be the same (under the hood) in the current odbxx way via:

odb settings("Equipment/Clock Reset/Settings");
settings.watch(cr_settings_changed);

Best,
Marius


> Well, the object *went* out of scope. For my code it‘s hard to realize this, so the error reporting is poor. Also the first object should have the same
> problem. Just by accident that it does not crash.
> 
> Stefan 
> 
> > This is not the case here. Note that the error message: "Callback received for a midas::odb object which went out of scope" is not called! The segmentation fault happens later line 96.
> > 
> > > The answer is in the error message: „Object went out of scope“. When your frontent_init() exits, the odb objects are destroyed. When you get a callback, it‘s linked to the
> > > destroyed object. This is like if you have a local string and pass a reference to that string in the return of the function.
> > > 
> > > Use a global object (bad) or use „new“ (potential memory leak). I would use a global structure which holds all odb objects.
> > > 
> > > Stefan
> > >  
> > > > 
> > > > last week I was running MIDAS with the commit 3ad98c5. Today I updated MIDAS and now all my watch functions are crashing. Attached I have a minimal example frontend of the problem.
> > > > 
> > > > In our software we have two functions one which sets up the ODB values of the frontend and another one which sets up all watch functions. So overall we connect two time to the ODB during fronend_init one time to create the values and one time to create the watch. In the example code a simple version of this setup is shown:
> > > > 
> > > > INT frontend_init() {
> > > > 
> > > >   cm_msg(MINFO, "frontend_init() setup", "Test FE");
> > > > 
> > > >   odb settings = {
> > > >     {"Test", 123},
> > > >     {"sub", {}}
> > > >   };
> > > >   settings.connect_and_fix_structure("/Equipment/Test FE/Settings");
> > > >   // settings.watch(watch); <-- this works without segmentation fault
> > > > 
> > > >   odb new_settings("/Equipment/Test FE/Settings");
> > > >   new_settings.watch(watch); // <-- here I am getting a segmentation fault
> > > > 
> > > >   return CM_SUCCESS;
> > > > }
> > > > 
> > > > When I directly set the watch everything runs fine however, when I create a new ODB object and use this one to set a watch I am getting the following segmentation fault:
> > > > 
> > > > Process 18474 stopped
> > > > * thread #1, queue = 'com.apple.main-thread', stop reason = EXC_BAD_ACCESS (code=1, address=0x34)
> > > >     frame #0: 0x000000010004fa38 test_fe`midas::odb::watch_callback(hDB=<unavailable>, hKey=<unavailable>, index=0, info=0x00006000002001c0) at odbxx.cxx:96:25 [opt]
> > > >    93  	      if (po->m_data == nullptr)
> > > >    94  	         mthrow("Callback received for a midas::odb object which went out of scope");
> > > >    95  	      midas::odb *poh = search_hkey(po, hKey);
> > > > -> 96  	      poh->m_last_index = index;
> > > >    97  	      po->m_watch_callback(*poh);
> > > >    98  	      poh->m_last_index = -1;
> > > >    99  	   }
> > > > 
> > > > Best,
> > > > Marius

I created a PR to fix this issue https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/pull-requests/42.
The crash happened since the change in commit 3ad98c5 always got the ODB via XML.
However, the creation from XML should only be used when a user wants to read fast (and when we are on a remote machine) so I added the flag use_from_xml to explicitly specify this.


> > {
> > odb new_settings("/Equipment/Test FE/Settings");
> > new_settings.watch(watch); // <-- here I am getting a segmentation fault
> > }
> 
> this code has a bug. "watch" is attached to object "new_settings" that is deleted
> after the closing curly bracket.

> I would say Stefan's odb API should not allow you to write code like this. an API defect.

As pointed out in the thread this feature is explicitly supported by odbxx.cxx:

void odb::watch(std::function<void(midas::odb &)> f) {
      if (m_hKey == 0 || m_hKey == -1)
         mthrow("watch() called for ODB key \"" + m_name +
                "\" which is not connected to ODB");

      // create a deep copy of current object in case it
      // goes out of scope
      midas::odb* ow = new midas::odb(*this);

      ow->m_watch_callback = f;
      db_watch(s_hDB, m_hKey, midas::odb::watch_callback, ow);

      // put object into watchlist
      g_watchlist.push_back(ow);
}

Also in the old way (see for example https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/src/191d13f98626fae533cbca17b00df7ee361edf16/examples/crfe/crfe.cxx#lines-126) it was possible to create a watch in a scope without the user taking care that the "object" does not go out of scope.
I think this feature should be supported by the framework.

Best,
Marius

Dear all,

a new feature was implemented which allows to search the log messages in MIDAS. Attached one can find a more detailed explanation of how to use the feature.

If you see any issues / bugs feel don't hesitate to report them. For now the code was tested on Linux / Mac OS using Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

Best,
Marius 

Hi,
I guess the issue is in the "[?]" part of the command, the indexing is handled differently from the odb path and does not 
support "?".
Are you trying to set only the first 9 channels?
Could you try with "[*]" or "[0-9]" instead?

Marco

> I'm interested in using the matching feature for ODBSET explained on 
> https://midas.triumf.ca/MidasWiki/index.php/Sequencer for settings that are in an 
> array, like:
> 
> COMMENT "Ground the detectors"
> ODBSET "/Detectors/Det*/Settings/Charge/Bias (V)[?]" 0
> 
> Currently I get an error when I try to run this script.  Is this expected?  Would it 
> be possible to implement matching for array values?
> 
> Thanks!

I created some keys in my ODB to try to match yours.
The ODBSET commands you wrote are all working fine (of course with different results), except only for the "/Detectors/Det*/Settings/Charge/Bias (V)*" which I will have to 
look into.
In any case the error message I'm getting is "could not match ay key" and not the one you are reporting.

Now I'm a bit puzzled:
Are you sure your ODB contains those keys?
Are you testing the ODBSET inside a more complex sequencer or on its own?

Maybe I can try to reproduce it using your ODB setup.
Could you send an ODB dump of the "/Detectors" folder using the "save" command of odbedit ("cd /Detectors" and then "save detector.odb")?

Best,

Marco


> The following all fail with "Cannot find ODB key "<key>""
> 
> ODBSET "/Detectors/Det*/Settings/Charge/Bias (V)[*]" 0
> ODBSET "/Detectors/Det*/Settings/Charge/Bias (V)[0-9]" 0
> ODBSET "/Detectors/Det*/Settings/Charge/Bias (V)[1]" 0
> ODBSET "/Detectors/Det*/Settings/Charge/Bias (V)*" 0
> ODBSET "/Detectors/Det*/Settings/Charge/Bias (V)" 0
> 
> 
> > Hi,
> > I guess the issue is in the "[?]" part of the command, the indexing is handled differently from the odb path and does not 
> > support "?".
> > Are you trying to set only the first 9 channels?
> > Could you try with "[*]" or "[0-9]" instead?
> > 
> > Marco
> > 
> > > I'm interested in using the matching feature for ODBSET explained on 
> > > https://midas.triumf.ca/MidasWiki/index.php/Sequencer for settings that are in an 
> > > array, like:
> > > 
> > > COMMENT "Ground the detectors"
> > > ODBSET "/Detectors/Det*/Settings/Charge/Bias (V)[?]" 0
> > > 
> > > Currently I get an error when I try to run this script.  Is this expected?  Would it 
> > > be possible to implement matching for array values?
> > > 
> > > Thanks!

I totally agree that we should have a consistent formatting for array index expansion.
I had a look to the mjsonrpc code and I found the function parse_array_index_list(...) which does this job.
I have a similar function (adapted form previous code) in odb.cxx called strarrayindex(...) that is designed for the same "consistency" purposes between odbedit and sequencer.

Let me put few points that I noticed:
- mjsonrpc has a very different way to write the full array (no indexes given) while currently sequencer requires "[*]" to do the same (otherwise it only changes the first value of the array)
- currently the sequencer and the underlying ODB calls use two indexes (that are the same if you want to write only one key) so we will need a serious rewriting to allow something like "ODBSET array[1,3,5]"
- if I correctly understood the code, mjsonrpc instead generates a list of indices and then calls an ODB write on each of them. That's not always a good thing, for example if you are writing an array of n parameters on a DAQ 
board you will call the hotlink on that key n times
- in addition to that the sequencer will also have to cope with variable-based indexes like "ODBSET array[$val]", but then how it should parse something like "[$a,1]" or "[$a*]"?

For the very first point I do not see a clean way to do this without breaking the compatibility of existing sequencers or having a difference between the two implementations.
For the others I guess we can find a way out, however that's a major modification so I will put it on my todo list when I can find some free time.
In any case I would propose to merge the two functions, so we have only to maintain a single implementation of the parsing.

I guess it's a good moment to brainstorm about that, let me know what you think

Marco


> > The following all fail with "Cannot find ODB key "<key>""
> > 
> > ODBSET "/Detectors/Det*/Settings/Charge/Bias (V)[*]" 0
> > ODBSET "/Detectors/Det*/Settings/Charge/Bias (V)[0-9]" 0
> > ODBSET "/Detectors/Det*/Settings/Charge/Bias (V)[1]" 0
> > ODBSET "/Detectors/Det*/Settings/Charge/Bias (V)*" 0
> > ODBSET "/Detectors/Det*/Settings/Charge/Bias (V)" 0
> > 
> 
> It would be cool if ODB pattern matching in the sequencer
> were consistent with the ODB pattern matching in the json-rpc
> interface for web pages:
> 
> https://midas.triumf.ca/MidasWiki/index.php/Mjsonrpc#Supported_array_index_syntax
> 
> K.O.

As reported by Stefan, in MEG II we have very similar ethernet throughputs.
In total, we have 34 crates each with 32 DRS4 digitiser chips and a single 1 Gbps readout link through a Xilinx Zynq SoC.
The data arrives in push mode without any external intervention, the only throttling being an optional prescaling on the trigger rate.
We discovered the hard way that 1 Gbps throughput on Zynq is not trivial at all: the embedded ethernet MAC does not support jumbo frames (always read the fine prints in the manuals!) and the embedded Linux ethernet stack seems to struggle when we go beyond 250 Mbps of UDP traffic.

Anyhow, even with the reduced speed, the maximum throughput at network input is around 8.5 Gbps which passes through the Mikrotik switches mentioned by Stefan.
We had very bad experiences in the past with similar price-point switches, observing huge packet drops when the instantaneous switching capacity cannot cope with the traffic, but so far we are happy with the Mikrotik ones.

On the receiver side, we have the DAQ server with an Intel E5-2630 v4 CPU and a 10 Gbit connection to the network using an Intel X710 Network card.
In the past, we used also a "cheap" 10 Gbit card from Tehuti but the driver performance was so bad that it could not digest more than 5 Gbps of data.

The current frontend is based on the mfe.c scheme for historical reasons (the very first version dates back to 2015).
We opted for a monolithic multithread solution so we can reuse the underlying DAQ code for other experiments which may not have the complete Midas backend.
Just to mention them: one is the FOOT experiment (which afaik uses an adapted version of Altas DAQ) and the other is the LOLX experiment (for which we are going to ship to Canada soon a small 32 channel system using Midas).
A major modification to Konstantin scheme is that we need to calibrate all WFMs online so that a software zero suppression can be applied to reduce the final data size (that part is still to be implemented).
This requirement results in additional resource usage to parse the UDP content into floats and calibrate them.
Currently, we have 7 packet collector threads to digest the full packet flow (using recvmmsg), followed by an event building stage that uses 4 threads and 3 other threads for WFM calibration.
We have progressive packet numbers on each packet generated by the hardware and a set of flags marking the start and end of the event; combining the packet number difference between the start and end of the event and the total received packets for that event it is really easy to understand if packet drops are happening.

All the thread infrastructure was tested and we could digest the complete throughput, we still have to finalise the full 10 Gbit connection to Midas because the final system has been installed only recently (April).
We are using EQ_USER flag to push events into mfe.c buffers with up to 4 threads, but I was observing that above ~1.5 Gbps the rb_get_wp() returns almost always DB_TIMEOUT and I'm forced to drop the event.
This conflicts with the measurements reported by Stefan (we were discussing this yesterday), so we are still investigating the possible cause.

It is difficult to report three years of development in a single Elog, I hope I put all the relevant point here.
It looks to me that we opted for very complementary approaches for high throughput ethernet with Midas, and I think there are still a lot of details that could be worth reporting.
In case someone organises some kind of "virtual workshop" on this, I'm willing to participate.
Best,

Marco


> In MEG II we also kind of achieved this rate. Marco F. will post an entry soon to describe the details. There is only one thing 
> I want to mention, which is our network switch. Instead of an expensive high-grade switch, we chose a cheap "Chinese" high-grade 
> switch. We have "rack switches", which are collector switch for each rack receiving up to 10 x 1GBit inputs, and outputting 1 x 
> 10 GBit to an "aggregation switch", which collects all 10 GBit lines form rack switches and forwards it with (currently a single 
> ) 10 GBit line. For the rack switch we use a 
> 
> MikroTik CRS354-48G-4S+2Q+RM 54 port
> 
> and for the aggregation switch
> 
> MikroTik CRS326-24S-2Q+RM 26 Port
> 
> both cost in the order of 500 US$. We were astonished that they don't loose UDP packets when all inputs send a packet at the 
> same time, and they have to pipe them to the single output one after the other, but apparently the switch have enough buffers 
> (which is usually NOT written in the data sheets). 
> 
> To avoid UDP packet loss for several events, we do traffic shaping by arming the trigger only when the previous event is 
> completely received by the frontend. This eliminates all flow control and other complicated methods. Marco can tell you the 
> details.
> 
> Another interesting aspect: While we get the data into the frontend, we have problems in getting it through midas. Your 
> bm_send_event_sg() is maybe a good approach which we should try. To benchmark the out-of-the-box midas, I run the dummy frontend 
> attached on my MacBook Pro 2.4 GHz, 4 cores, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD disk. I got
> 
> Event size: 7 MB
> 
> No logging: 900 events/s = 6.7 GBytes/s
> 
> Logging with LZ4 compression: 155 events/s = 1.2 GBytes/s
> 
> Logging without compression: 170 events/s = 1.3 GBytes/s
> 
> So with this simple approach I got already more than 1 GByte of "dummy data" through midas, indicating that the buffer 
> management is not so bad. I did use the plain mfe.c frontend framework, no bm_send_event_sg() (but mfe.c uses rpc_send_event() which is an 
> optimized version of bm_send_event()).
> 
> Best,
> Stefan

We are using the new history formula as a quick way to convert signals from sensors to actual physical values (for example Voltage->Temperature, Voltage->relative humidity 
...), so it is great that the shown voltage is the calculated one.

I would like to add a point to this discussion.
In our collaboration people attach images of history plots to elogs, meeting presentation and/or physical logbooks.
The proposed scaling formula may work fine online using the cursors, but, once an image is created, I do not understand how it is possible to extract the value for a scaled 
variables.
Suppose you see a graph in a presentation with a current increase by some PSU and the current was scaled to be in the same plot of the voltage.
Looking at the delta in the image, how can you judge the current increase without any axis/grid to refer to?

So I support Stefan proposal for a secondary axis, as long as it is clear which value belong to which axis.
Maybe marking the channels in the description or using different line styles/thickness?

Best,
Marco