In ETAS INCA, what classes correspond to each type of database item?

Question

ETAS INCA is the workhorse for many powertrain calibration engineers in the automotive industry--it's as essential to a calibration engineer as a good text editor or version control system is to a general-purpose software developer. But its API documentation leaves a lot to be desired.

Does anyone have a guide that shows how the database entities in the INCA GUI map to classes in the INCA COM/.NET API?

Answer 1

The INCA API is structured to resemble the concepts that users are familiar with when they interact with INCA using the GUI. Broadly speaking, you can do most of your GUI tasks programmatically through code. That being said, the connection is not always clear in the INCA documentation.

The INCA API groups classes under two namespaces:

de.etas.cebra.toolAPI.Common

Classes in this namespace encapsulate experiment-related tasks, such as reading measurements and setting calibration values. You will see these objects "in action" when you are viewing an open experiment. This is a pretty extensive namespace, so I will save it for a future post.

de.etas.cebra.toolAPI.Inca

Classes in this namespace encapsulate INCA database tasks, such as copying or renaming items. You will see these objects "in action" from the main INCA database window.

To follow along at home, fire up INCA, and then open the default "DB" demo database. The screen shots below are from INCA 7, but for the images below, I have confirmed that the underlying API is nearly identical going back to INCA 5.4.

The Database Objects Pane

Folders like "USER A," "Demo," and "Measure Catalog," are represented by the IncaFolder class.

Experiments like "demo configuration 1" and "demo configuration 2" are represented by the ExperimentEnvironment class.

ECU-Projects like "Demo03" are represented by the Asap2Project class.

ECU Documentation does not appear to be covered in this namespace. I will edit my answer if I learn otherwise.

Workspaces like "Workspace" are represented by the HardwareConfiguration class.

ECU-Project elements

When you click on an ECU-Project, the contents appear in the Datasets pane. An ECU-Project only contains two classes, as shown below.

Folders are represented by the Asap2ProjectFolder class.

Datasets are represented by the Dataset class.

To access the other ASAP2 elements of a DataSet and ECU-Project, call the Asap2Project.Asap2ModuleForDataSet() method.