RE: Initializing a record VAL field with a constant

["Allison, Stephanie" <saa@slac.stanford.edu>]

Hi,

> If you use ao and longout, you can put your initial value in DOL.  I'm not
> positive (and can't test this now), but I believe that when the record is
> processed, the value will be unchanged.  This means you can set PINI=YES
> and your alarms will be cleared at initialization.

I always use ao/bo/longout/stringout for computational (soft) "constants" with PINI=YES.  However, if I save/restore the "constant" value over reboot, I do not set DOL since that will overwrite the value that gets restored (unless you restore after record initialization by either adding a hook in initHooks or using CA after iocInit is finished).  I prefer my startup sequence to be:

load all databases
restore values from RDB or channel watcher file using static db access (preferrably not returning if not successful)
iocInit()

The only problem with not specifying DOL is that the very first time a record is loaded, the value has to be manually initialized with a caput (and it must be added to the bumpless reboot saveset channel list before the next reboot).

Stephanie Allison