Improve LoadLog to allow it to parse the 3 column log format

[Nick Draper]

Browsing for files on the central data archive via links such as
isis\inst$\ndxsomething\instrument\data\cycle_09_3 (or “d:\data\cycle_09_3” on cabin computers) can sometimes be very slow. While the computing group is striving to improve the performance of the archive system by upgrading the network and backend hardware, one of the main reasons for slow browsing can be the number of “.txt” log files in a cycle directory.

If your instrument has a lot of SECI blocks that log only a few values, then you could speed up archive access by using the “log to single file option” in SECI for some (or all) of these blocks. This option is available in the bottom left of the “change or add dashboard value” SECI screen. If enabled for a block called e.g. TEMP1, then instead of logging to the separate file INST12345_TEMP1.TXT, values will be sent to the combined file INST12345.LOG. This combined log file has the column format “time block value” compared to the separate log file format of “time value”. If required, it is easy to later create a “_TEMP1.txt” file from the single .LOG file using the “extract_logs” program available from
olympic\babylon5\public\freddie\extract_logs - this functionality will also be available from within Open GENIE.

If you need further information on using a single log file, or help with configuring your instrument, please contact either Freddie or Matt Clarke

[Sofia Antony]

(In [3555]) re#1002 improved loadlog algorithm to load single log file with three column format.NIMROD raw file,log files adding for unit testing.

[Roman Tolchenov]

(In [3556]) Fix crashes of MantidPlot when plotting some logs. re #1002

[Sofia Antony]

(In [3566]) re#1002 -load log added code for handling exceptions

[Stuart Campbell]

This ticket has been transferred to github issue ​1850