Data Collection Documentation

The program dataCollect.exe can be used to collect snmp data from the 
sensorArray or other snmp hosts. The program is configured through the
use of command line options and a text file oid.txt. The output of the data
collection is stored in a text file. 

The data output text file name includes the IP address of the host being 
collected. For example data10.1.1.7.txt is the file name for the data 
collection output when monitorring the sensorArray with IP address 10.1.1.7. 

In this way you can collect data from many different hosts in the same
directory simultaneously.

Once the data has been collected  it can be read into a spreadsheet such
as excel.


How to collect data:

1. Create a file called oid.txt in the same directory as the program 
dataCollect. The file oid.txt contains a list of the oids that you wish to 
collect data for. If you wish to run multiple data collections from the
same directory you can give each input file a different name such as
oid10.1.1.7.txt. In this case you will inform dataCollect.exe of the
new name by using the option -Oid nameOfTextFile.  

Each line contains one oid. You may have comments following the oid.

A typical line in the oid.txt file could be:
.1.3.6.1.4.1.3854.1.2.2.1.16.1.3.0  #this is the temperature 1


2. Start the program dataCollect. This program contains many command line 
options. To learn what these options are you can enter dataCollect from the 
DOS prompt.

A typical command line could be:
dataCollect -IP 10.1.1.7 -Pass public -Poll 5

3. The program dataCollect will print to the screen after every pass of the 
data collection. When you have collected enough data press CTRL-C to stop
the program from running.

4. The data output file called for example data10.1.1.7.txt should be copied
to a new directory for analysis. This is suggested because the next time 
dataCollect is run it will overwrite the output file.

5. Read the data output file into excel. Excel will load the text input wizard.
You should choose Delimited and press Next. You should then choose comma and
press Finish.