The screenshot above shows the menu for a parent Set which lists all of the available criteria that can be used to define the set. To create a new criteria, click on one of the buttons, such as New Device Criteria and AutoNOC will generate a criteria child object for you.

To read a full discussion on creating and organizing the parent object, please see 3.3 Sets.

3.4.1 "Fuzzy Logic" and Default Criteria Behavior
Each criteria has a select list of objects handed to it and it tries to use the rules it has defined to eliminate or discard the object from the set. If a given rule or criteria field is left undefined or is left blank AutoNOC will, unless otherwise instructed, allow all objects to pass the criteria.

The principle theory at work here is to whittle down the set of objects into the appropriate and desired group and this particular methodology was chosen in order to reduce the complexity typically required for object set selection.

When applying criteria to a set, AutoNOC looks at objects and does it's best to determine relationships between the object it is looking at and the specified criteria. For instance, if a device criteria is asked to evaluate a probe, then AutoNOC will lookup the device that probe is for and see if the probe's device meets the criteria. These built-in cognitive relationships or "fuzzy logic" makes it much easier to create really complicated and adaptive sets without having to jump through many different hoops as mainstream database query technologies can often require.

3.4.2 Device Criteria
Device criteria is primarily used to select specific devices as well as the objects that are related to the device (such as child probes). The following screenshot shows the primary settings available for configuring the behavior of the device set criteria.

The following describes each device set criteria setting in detail:

• Model Contains, Manufacturer Contains, and Type Contains
  Every device should have a device template selected for it. Each of these criteria fields looks at the template for a device object (if one exists) and then checks the template to see if the Model, Manufacturer, and Type fields contains any of these words. The comparison is, by default, case sensitive to the template.
• IP Rule
  The device criteria can also look at the IP addresses of the device's interfaces to see if they meet some rule. Examples of working rules include (do not specify quotes): 192.168.1.*, 192.168.1.8 TO 192.168.1.15, and 192.168.1.4/22 (CIDR notation).
• Devices
  Additionally, you can specifically choose devices that match the criteria using the provided multi-select box.

3.4.3 Interface Criteria
AutoNOC's interface criteria is a quick and convenient way to choose specific interfaces in your model. This feature is especially useful if you have critical WAN links that need to be monitored and they should all be listed in their own specific group. The following screenshot shows the primary settings available for configuring the behavior of the interface set criteria.

The interface set criteria has two settings. You can either choose by interface type or you can choose the specific interface from the list of interfaces.

3.4.4 Probe Criteria and Log Criteria
AutoNOC's probe criteria and log criteria work in virtually the same way, only they operate individually on probes and logs. The following screenshot shows the key screen that needs an explanation. Note that both the log set criteria and the probe set criteria make use of the same fields.

Here are full details on each of the probe and log criteria settings:

• Category Contains
  Every probe or log instance is a child of a device, category, and a component. This field allows you to specify text for AutoNOC to match in the name of the category. A good example of how this field might be used is if you consider a device with a child category object called Interfaces. If you enter the text "Interfaces" in the category field, then AutoNOC will grab all probes for all relevant devices that have the category "Interfaces" as a parent.
• Component Contains
  As described above, every probe or log instance has a component. This field allows you to specify text for AutoNOC to match in the name of the component. The component object is the immediate parent of the probe or log object. An example of how this field might be used is if you consider a network where the user wanted to see all Traffic In probes on Intel interfaces. You would specify the Traffic In probe on the Templates tab.
• Expression
  AutoNOC can evaluate probes dynamically using expressions. For instance, if you wanted to query all probes that have a negative service level (indicative of a bad condition), then you could specify %L<0 as an expression in the expression tab. AutoNOC looks at each object and processes the expression within the scope of the object being looked at. For complete information on defining and authoring these kinds of expressions, see 4.3 - Interpreter.
• Templates
  Depending on whether you have created a probe or log criteria, AutoNOC will display the templates available for that object type and allow you to restrict the criteria objects to objects that have the specified template.

3.4.5 Object Criteria
The object set criteria is a simple and useful set criteria. The following screenshot shows the object criteria specific settings available:

Each of these object criteria settings are described below:

• Name Contains
  Finds objects whose name contains the field specified (or nothing if empty). This field is case sensitive.
• Object Flags
  Select the flag or flags that need to be included in the set. If no flags are specified than AutoNOC will include all objects, regardless of their flags. This feature is useful if the user needs to see which objects are being ignored, for instance.
• Expression
  An optional boolean expression, that will be solved within the scope of the object being tested. If it is TRUE than the object will be accepted by the criteria, and rejected if FALSE.

3.4.6 Record Criteria
AutoNOC can even dynamically analyze internal records in returned object sets! The record criteria is specified entirely as an expression as shown in this screenshot:

The record criteria works at the scope of an individual record in a database capable object such as a probe or log. When AutoNOC is accessing the records from an object included in this set and it has a record criteria specified, then the software will run each individual record through the record criteria. Any record whose local scope processed expression evaluates to being true will be kept in the resulting set. If this expression evaluates to false than it will not. This feature is very interesting because it allows dynamic live purging of record data.

For a complete discussion of authoring AutoNOC OSP expressions, see 4.3 - Interpreter.

3.4.7 Schedule Criteria
AutoNOC can dynamically change the set of objects returned based on the time or day. This is a powerful feature. It allows you to a define a set that forces an alarm to only monitor certain objects from 9am to 5pm, for instance. The criteria works as a universal mask against the objects being checked. When the current time is met, it will either keep or discard all objects (if the parent is configured for intersection) it is checked against.

The following screenshot shows an example definition of the schedule criteria:

• Exclude the Provided Schedule
  When enabled, this causes AutoNOC to exclude objects when the current time is not the time that is listed.
• Days, Start Time, and End Time
  Specify days and the daily time range for those days that are desired to allow objects to be included in the set.

It is also useful to note that sophisticated behavior can be defined with mulitiple schedule criteria being applied to the same set.

3.4.8 Set Criteria
Another powerful set criteria is called the "set criteria". This criteria allows the user to either include set objects (which is useful for nested displays in the visualize and investigate tabs) or to actually go inside other sets, query them for their objects, and insert the returning objects into the current set. In the latter case, it is possible to combine objects from multiple sets into a new set, for instance.

The following screenshot shows the settings for the set criteria:

• Available Sets
  Specify which sets should be seleted and used for this criteria.
• Use Objects Inside Set(s)
  When disabled (the default), AutoNOC will include the actual set object chosen itself. When enabled, AutoNOC will go inside the chosen set, query it, and return the objects included. If the parent set has intersection logic defined, then only the objects that in the final, resulting set will be included. In the case of union sets, AutoNOC will add these chosen objects to add all chosen objects.

3.4.9 User Criteria
AutoNOC sets can even encapsulate users. The user criteria is fairly straightforward and is shown in the following dialog.

The only available setting for the user criteria is to select which users are included. An example of using the user set criteria is to only send e-mail alerts to specific users as is described in 3.8 - Actions.