C2MS12 — Inconsistent Fields in AMVAL Response and AMVAL Data Messages

The AMVAL Response and AMVAL Data messages mostly line up with MVAL Response and MVAL Data messages, but not quite. There are some inconsistencies among these messages. One aspect of these is that there should only ever be one MVAL Response Message, but may be multiple AMVAL Response Messages. The documentation does state this, and I'm only relaying it how not to confuse this issue. That difference is expected and normal. The reason for this particular difference is that the AMVAL REQ/RESP has a finite end (see descr of STOP-TIME in AMVAL REQ: "Requested stop time of the mnemonic values to be retrieved from the telemetry archive. Defaults to the end of the telemetry archive") while MVAL can be no-end. This is also manifested in the concept of START and STOP request types in MVAL REQ, which don't exist in AMVAL REQ.

However, there are some inconsistencies that do need analysis and probably correction in one form or another:

• The AMVAL Response contains no samples, which are present for all of MVAL Response, MVAL Data and AMVAL Data. So, if requesting the data back in the AMVAL Response, not all the data is returned. It could also be seen that you might request the data to come back in AMVAL Data if you need this deeper detail, which would be fine, but maybe some explanation in text would be warranted if we keep that construct.
• Also, AMVAL Response, contains a Product Subtype Category not found in any of the others. This needs analysis and convergence to align these messages better. Note, too that Product info is contained in AMVAL Request, as well. This seems out-of-place, almost like it was copied from the product message. Interestingly, the PRODCUT-TYPE is always AAA (Archive and Assessment) and the PROD-SUBTYPE is always DATA. Is that really necessary to say? I mean, it is a request for archived MVALs, it doesn't seem to add anything to say that that's a DATA product from AAA. Instead, this seems like it aligns more with the Product Request Message that has these fields that are to be searched generically. Note that this has a corollary in Archive Message Retrieval Request/Response, which also contain Product Info, so need to look into that at the same time. These are the only other messages than Product Messages that reference PROD-NAME.