Beginning with SNF version 3, a number of features have been added to the SNFMulti engine to support automated rulebase updates. The distribution files contain everything you need to set up automated rulebase downloads using these features. Of course, you can also build your own customized update mechanisms using the new features.

Update Ready Notification: UpdateReady.txt

The first feature is the UpdateReady.txt semaphore file. This file is created or overwritten in the SNF workspace whenever the rulebase file on our servers is newer than the one that is being used in the SNF engine. The file contains the compressed ISO timestamp for the newest rulebase file.

One way you could use this feature is to create a script that watches for this file. When your script discovers this file is present then it can download the new rulebase file and perform any other operations you wish to trigger when the update occurs. Once the update process is complete your script should delete the semaphore file. It's also a good idea (usually) to create some kind of locking mechanism to ensure that only one copy of your script runs at a time.

Update Script Launcher

The second feature is the mechanism. This feature allows you to configure the SNF engine to run a script via a system() call whenever the rulebase file on our servers is newer than the rulebase file running in the SNF engine. This script will be called repeatedly until the condition is resolved. Each iteration will be separated by a configurable guard time (3 minutes by default).

getRulebase Sample Scripts

The distribution files contain an appropriate sample script for automating rulebase updates. For Win* systems the script is getRulebase.cmd. For *nix systems the script is simply getRulebase.