NodeBrain

A Rule Engine for State and Event Monitoring

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NodeBrain 0.9.04 Released (September 24, 2015)

This patch release provides a fix for a defect that produced an infinate loop condition after a specific sequence of alert commands and redefine commands for if rules. If you use redefine commands (introduced in 0.9.02) on if rules, you should upgrade to this release.

NodeBrain 0.9.03 Released (December 14, 2014)

The primary goal of release 0.9.03 is to further reduce the importance of command arrival order by enhancing rule language syntax and processing so rule coder intentions are expressed more clearly on individual commands. This motivated the following enhancements:

New syntax for cell functions to avoid name collisions with node functions
Extended syntax for node functions.
Unique term separators for nodes (".") and other types of terms ("_").
Implicit definition of nodes when previously undefined terms are referenced as nodes
Support for node redefinition
Event attribute transience for alert commands

The first three enhancements reduce the need to be aware of prior definitions of cell functions, node functions, cell terms, and node terms to know which is being referenced. The fourth enhancement leverages the first three to enable node and node function references before a node is explicitly defined. The related fifth enhancement removes a prior restriction preventing node redefinition. The sixth enhancement removes the burden of having to specify all possible event attributes on every alert to a given node to prevent an alert from adopting unspecified attributes from prior events. This makes more practical the use of a single node to monitor heterogeneous events.

NodeBrain 0.8.17 and 0.9.02 released under an MIT License (August 13, 2014)

Release 0.8.17 uses libedit as a replacement for readline and includes document updates, but has no new functionality over 0.8.16.

Release 0.9.02 includes performance enhancements for large relational value-rich rule sets, where there are only a few terms with many cells using a relational operator to compare to a constant number or string. For the equal operator performance is now reasonable even when a single term is compared to a million different constant values. This release is not completely rule compatible with 0.8.x releases, so you should read about the incompatibilities and update your rules if upgrading from 0.8 to 0.9.

With these releases, NodeBrain switched to an MIT License to remove GPLv2 restrictions on distribution of proprietary plug-ins and other forms of integration.

NodeBrain 0.8.16 Released (February 16, 2014)

The 0.8.16 release provides minor packaging changes that provide the option to build without features depending on OpenSSL and without selected modules. An update to the NodeBrain Guide was included in this release.

NodeBrain 0.8.15 Released (May 25, 2013)

The 0.8.15 release provides minor packaging changes for downstream Linux distribution package managers. This includes support for parallel builds and the addition of files for the Debian package management system. The target location for node modules has changed to better support installation of multiple NodeBrain versions.

NodeBrain 0.8.14 Released (February 26, 2013)

The 0.8.14 release includes several security patches and a conversion of most documentation to Texinfo. Documentation for features introduced in 0.8.3, previously undocumented, is included in this release.

NodeBrain 0.8.3 Release File (October 8, 2010)

A release file for NodeBrain 0.8.3 (Dopey), nodebrain-0.8.3.tar.gz, is now available from the SourceForge release file management system. Thanks to John Ellson of AT&T Labs Research, this file can be used to build RPM files as follows.

# tar -xf nodebrain-0.8.3.tar.gz
# cd nodebrain-0.8.3
# ./configure
# make
# make rpm

This release is compatible with rules designed for NodeBrain 0.7.4 and later versions. The primary new features in NodeBrain 0.8.3 are 1) multi-master message replication, and 2) statistical anomaly detection. Documentation for these new features will follow.

NodeBrain 0.7.4 Alpha Release with Tutorial (February 5, 2009)

NodeBrain 0.7.4 (Dunce) is available for alpha testing with an updated NodeBrain Tutorial. This version breaks compatibility with earlier versions by folding the prior concepts of "brains", "listeners", and "experts" into a single "node" concept. Rules created under 0.6.x and earlier versions will not work under 0.7.x without modification. Updates to the manual pages and other documents are expected within the next several weeks along with a beta 0.7.x release.

NodeBrain 0.6.5 Released (April 20, 2006)

The Servant Program Interface is now supported on Windows XP when running as a service or from a command prompt. Testing as a service revealed that 0.6.4 was not in fact ready for release on Windows and further code changes were required. A sample service called "NodeBrain Sample Agent" is included as an option in the Microsoft Installer based binary release for Windows. The rules provided with this sample agent are not useful, except to illustrate how NodeBrain can be used to create a monitoring agent. Stay tuned if you are waiting for useful working examples.

NodeBrain 0.6.4 Released - Unix/Linux (April 1, 2006)

Support for a simple Servant Program Interface has been added to NodeBrain and released as version 0.6.4. This interface enables programs written in any programming or scripting language to run as a child of NodeBrain and communicate on stdin, stdout, and stderr. This simplifies the task of writing adapters for event collection and obtaining the state of monitored elements.

This release introduces a NodeBrain Tutorial that hopefully provides a friendlier introduction to NodeBrain, and the former NodeBrain User's Guide has been split into multiple documents including a User Guide, Language Reference, Module Reference and API Reference. The last two are still undergoing revision and will be released later. To conform to SourceForge site usage rules, complete documents must now be downloaded from the file release system in PDF format. Online versions are posted here, as are links for downloading the PDF version.

Code supporting asynchronous I/O and child processes has been reorganized into an interface called the Medulla causing some visible differences in the log file when system shell commands are invoked.

Although the Windows code is ready, we are still making packaging changes for Windows, so Windows release files are not yet available.

NodeBrain 0.6.2 Released (May 8, 2005)

Release 0.6.2 is available for download and beta testing. This release provides refinements to the API introduced in 0.6.0. Some prototype skill modules (plug-ins) are provided as examples. Although this is a patch release, the API is incompatible with release 0.6.1. This was considered to be safe since usage is very light. A few bugs are fixed in this release, although most of the effort outside of the API work was put into fixing some deficiencies on the Windows platform---both functionality and packaging. All functionality is now available on Windows, the binary release for Windows uses an MSI installer, a Windows Help file is included, and a source release file is provided as a Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 workspace.

NodeBrain 0.6.1 Released (October 20, 2004)

Release 0.6.1 of version 0.6 (Knucklehead) is available for download and beta testing. This release fixes some bugs and improves on the packaging for Unix and GNU/Linux platforms. Binary release files are now source distributions with binaries included---earlier binary release files did not include source code. Thanks to the SourceForge Compile Farm, builds have been tested on more platforms: FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris on x86, GNU/Linux on Alpha, and GNU/Linux on AMD64. NodeBrain now supports a "check script" feature that will simplify the creation and maintenance of a set of regression tests. This release includes a small set of tests that can be run using "make check." The "solve" command has been cleaned up, and cell expressions may now be used for symbolic substitution. See the NEWS file for a more complete list of changes.

NodeBrain 0.6.0 Released (April 9, 2004)

This prototype release introduces NodeBrain plug-ins called "skill modules". These are modules that utilize NodeBrain's new Expert Skill Module C API to extend the functionality of NodeBrain without modification to the base code. "Sequence rules" for "correlation threads" are also introduced in a prototype state. Both of these new features will be refined in future releases as we progress to version 1.0. Some previously documented features are more complete in this release; e.g. time conditions, symbolic substitution and macros. Several bugs have also been fixed. The source distribution and CVS repository have been improved to support the GNU style "./configure", "make", "make install", and "make dist" commands. Command syntax is evolving. In this release we have new syntax, deprecated syntax and in one seldom used case (the use of "?"), there is an incompatibility with rules written for prior releases.

NodeBrain 0.5.4 Released (July 24, 2003)

Patch release 0.5.4 is available for download. This release fixes a significant defect in the handling of server sockets relative to long running spawned child processes. If you are running NodeBrain as an agent (Unix daemon or Windows service), this update is recommended. A couple less important defects have been fixed in the handling of scheduled deletion of caching table rows, conditions responding to row expiration, and time conditions. Code has been included for a plug-in module C API that is unfinished and undocumented, but sufficient to illustrate the future direction. (Our plug-in module API will be the theme of release 0.6.) Documentation has been included for using NodeBrain over an SSH tunnel.

NodeBrain 0.5.2 Released (March 20, 2003)

Patch release 0.5.2 for version 0.5 (Numskull) is now available for download. This release corrects some minor differences between the code and documentation. In addition, the source now includes a make file and supports compilation on Mac OS X (Darwin). A simple prototype C API was included as part of the minor restructuring needed to support the make file.

NodeBrain 0.5 on SourceForge.net (March 1, 2003)

The NodeBrain open source project begins on SourceForge.net with version 0.5, a "working prototype" to seed open source development of 1.x versions. In the author's view, NodeBrain 0.5 is useful for event monitoring applications. However, we expect users of NodeBrain 0.5 within the open source community to exercise it in new ways, exposing bugs and deficiencies not encountered by the author. Feedback from these users will play an important role in future versions.