Application Director

The Application Director allows you to start, reboot, or kill an R2 station on the connected R2 platform. You also use it to examine standard station output, for troubleshooting and debug purposes. Station output appears in the main view pane, and is controlled by buttons in the lower-right area of the view.

Figure 30. Application Director when connected to R2-configured JACE-603 or JACE-645

Also, here you set an R2 station's “restart” properties (instead of editing “station.properties”), by using the “Auto-Start” and “Restart on Failure” checkboxes. Settings are applied on the next reboot.

The top of the view is the “installed station” area, showing the R2 station installed and its status.

Brief descriptions for the top group of right-side buttons for an R2 JACE are as follows:

Start

Available only for an R2 station that is stopped with an “Idle” status (otherwise, you must Reboot). For a related example of using, see To safely stop the R2 station.
Reboot

Available for a station that is either running or stopped, including with a status of “Failed”. A reboot restarts the host QNX OS, Java VM, platform daemon, and finally the Niagara R2 station (providing that it is configured to “Auto-restart”). If the station is running, after the initial reboot popup confirmation, a second popup dialog appears asking for station Administrator’s login credentials. This is for the runtime station save (to SNS on that JACE), automatically performed right before the reboot.

The reboot drops the Workbench platform connection, but after 30 seconds or so you should be able to reconnect, typically using the Back button.
Kill

Enabled only if the R2 station has a status of “Starting”, “Stopping”, or “Running”. If you affirm in the popup confirmation, the JACE’s platform daemon terminates the station process immediately, without attempting a runtime database save. Standard output halts, and station status becomes “Failed”.
The original intent of “kill” was to stop the station in a case where it is stuck in a “Starting” or “Stopping” state, and is generally not recommended for any R2 station with a running status. However, because R2 stations cannot be “Stopped” from this view (unlike NiagaraAX stations), for a running station you could elect to kill it after you manually and successfully invoke a runtime database save (Save DB button). Together, these actions would resemble the “Stop” action for a NiagaraAX-configured JACE with a running station status. In this “Failed” (stopped) state, you could do R2 software module configuration if needed. See R2 Software Manager.
Dump Threads

Enabled only if the station has a “Running” status. When pressed, the JACE’s platform daemon has the station send a VM thread dump to its standard output.
Save DB

Enabled only if the station has a “Running” status. When pressed, a popup dialog prompts for the R2 station’s Administrator user name and password. Upon entry, the platform daemon has the station save its runtime database in SNS format. A second “Info” popup appears upon successful save.

For further details on the Application Director (although specific to NiagaraAX-configured platforms), refer to the “Application Director” section in the NiagaraAX Platform Guide.