When a Client subscribes for Events, the Notification of transitions will begin at the time of the Subscription. The currently existing state will not be reported. This means for example that Clients are not informed of currently Active Alarms until a new state change occurs.

Clients can obtain the current state of all Condition instances that are in an interesting state, by requesting a Refresh for a Subscription. It should be noted that Refresh is not a general replay capability since the Server is not required to maintain an Event history.

Clients request a Refresh by calling the ConditionRefresh Method. The Server will respond with a RefreshStartEventType Event. This Event is followed by the Retained Conditions. The Server may also send new Event Notifications interspersed with the Refresh related Event Notifications. After the Server is done with the Refresh, a RefreshEndEvent is issued marking the completion of the Refresh. Clients shall check for multiple Event Notifications for a ConditionBranch to avoid overwriting a new state delivered together with an older state from the Refresh process. If a ConditionBranch exists, then the current Condition shall be reported. This is True even if the only interesting item regarding the Condition is that ConditionBranches exist. This allows a Client to accurately represent the current Condition state.

A Client that wishes to display the current status of Alarms and Conditions (known as a “current Alarm display”) would use the following logic to process Refresh Event Notifications. The Client flags all Retained Conditions as suspect on reception of the Event of the RefreshStartEventType. The Client adds any new Events that are received during the Refresh without flagging them as suspect. The Client also removes the suspect flag from any Retained Conditions that are returned as part of the Refresh. When the Client receives a RefreshEndEvent, the Client removes any remaining suspect Events, since they no longer apply.

The following items should be noted with regard to ConditionRefresh:

• As described in 4.4 some systems require that previous states of a Condition are preserved for some time. Some Servers – in particular if they require acknowledgement of previous states – will maintain separate ConditionBranches for prior states that still need attention.

ConditionRefresh shall issue Event Notifications for all interesting states (current and previous) of a Condition instance and Clients can therefore receive more than one Event for a Condition instance with different BranchIds.

• Under some circumstances a Server may not be capable of ensuring the Client is fully in sync with the current state of Condition instances. For example, if the underlying system represented by the Server is reset or communications are lost for some period of time the Server may need to resynchronize itself with the underlying system. In these cases, the Server shall send an Event of the RefreshRequiredEventType to advise the Client that a Refresh may be necessary. A Client receiving this special Event should initiate a ConditionRefresh as noted in this clause.
• To ensure a Client is always informed, the three special EventTypes (RefreshEndEventType, RefreshStartEventType and RefreshRequiredEventType) ignore the Event content filtering associated with a Subscription and will always be delivered to the Client.
• ConditionRefresh applies to a Subscription. If multiple Event Notifiers are included in the same Subscription, all Event Notifiers are refreshed.