The A&E COM UA Proxy supports all of the defined A&E COM filter criteria.

These filter types are implemented using simple numeric comparisons. For Event filters, the received Event shall match the Event type(s) specified by the filter. For Category filters, the received Event’s category (as mapped from UA Event type) shall match the category or categories specified by the filter. For severity filters, the received Event severity shall be within the range specified by the Subscription filter.

In the case of source filters, the UA A & C Server is free to provide any appropriate, Server-specific value for SourceName. There is no expectation that source Nodes discovered via browsing can be matched to the SourceName Property of the Event returned by the UA A & C Server using string comparisons. Further, the A&E COM Client may receive Events from sources which are not discoverable by following only HasNotifier and/or HasEventSource References. Thus, source filters will only apply if the source string can be matched to the SourceName Property of an Event as received from the target UA A & C Server. Source filter logic will use the pattern matching rules documented in the A&E COM specification, including the use of wildcard characters.

The A&E COM UA Proxy implements Area filtering by adjusting the set of MonitoredItems associated with a Subscription. In the simple case where the Client selects no area filter, the A&E COM UA Proxy will create a UA Subscription which contains just one MonitoredItem, the Server Object. In doing so, the A&E COM UA Proxy will receive Events from the entire Server address space – that is, all Areas. The A&E COM Client will discover the areas associated with the UA Server address space by browsing. The A&E COM Client will use GetQualifiedAreaName as usual in order to obtain area strings which can be used as filters. When the A&E COM Client applies one or more of these area strings to the COM Subscription filter, the A&E COM UA Proxy will create MonitoredItems for each notifier Node identified by the area string(s). Recall that the fully qualified area name is in fact the namespace qualified relative path to the associated notifier Node.

The A&E COM UA Proxy calls the TranslateBrowsePathsToNodeIds Service to get the Node ids of the fully qualified area names in the filter. The Node ids are then added as MonitoredItems to the UA Subscription maintained by the A&E COM UA Proxy. The A&E COM UA Proxy also maintains a reference count for each of the areas added, to handle the case of multiple A&E COM Subscription applying the same area filter. When the A&E COM Subscriptions are removed or when the area name is removed from the filter, the ref count on the MonitoredItem corresponding to the area name is decremented. When the ref count goes to zero, the MonitoredItem is removed from the UA Subscription.

As with source filter strings, area filter strings can contain wildcard characters. Area filter strings which contain wildcard characters require more processing by the A&E COM UA Proxy. When the A&E COM Client specifies an area filter string containing wildcard characters, the A&E COM UA Proxy will scan the relative path for path elements that are completely specified. The partial path containing just those segments which are fully specified represents the root of the notifier sub tree of interest. From this sub tree root Node, the A&E COM UA Proxy will collect the list of notifier Nodes below this point. The relative path associated with each of the collected notifier Nodes in the sub tree will be matched against the Client supplied relative path containing the wildcard character. A MonitoredItem is created for each notifier Node in the sub tree whose relative path matches that of the supplied relative path using established pattern matching rules. An area filter string which contains wildcard characters may result in multiple MonitoredItems added to the UA Subscription. By contrast, an area filter string made up of fully specified path segments and no wildcard characters will result in one MonitoredItem added to the UA Subscription. So, the steps involved are:

1. Check if the filter string contains any of these wild card characters, '*', '?', '#', '[', ']', '!', '-'.
2. Scan the string for path elements that are completely specified by retrieving the substring up to the last occurrence of the ‘/’ character.
3. Obtain the Node Id for this path using TranslateBrowsePathsToNodeIds
4. Browse the Node for all notifiers below it.
5. Using the ComUtils.Match() function match the browse names of these notifiers against the Client supplied string containing the wild card character.
6. Add the Node ids of the notifiers that match as MonitoredItems to the UA Subscription.