DQMH Consortium Toolkits Feature Requests

Everytime I create a new request to a DQMH cloneable module I always end up connecting the Module ID terminal to the new request added to API Tester, please add an additional scripting step to connect this terminal automatically

When you update the DQMH version, you can have hundreds of failures to fix in your projects (not because everything is broken but just because, for example, a new feature requires updating a VI).

A fixer is available most of the time, and you just have to click the button to make the code change.

For me, the UX issue is that after you hit the fix button, you need to select the next failure with your mouse and then click on the fix button. I'm not too fond of this kind of mouse gymnastics.

My proposition: If the fix is successful, the next failure could be selected automatically.

The fixing process would be significantly improved.

Hi,

This might be a special use case, but maybe there are more applications for a cluster of event registration refnums for helper loops.

My use case involves DAQmx or IMAQdx events. These events get registered through a DAQmx or IMAQdx reference, like this:

The register for events for the helper loop is happening before the loop and the task is started, which means that registering to the "Done" event of the task doesn't work if done like this:

Because there is no valid task reference yet, so the event registration gives an error.

What works instead is the bundling of the "Module Request Events"-event registration refnum with a static event registration refnum of the task "Done" event. 

Inside the helper loop, at a point where the task has been created, the event registration for "Done" event can be updated.

This works very well and simplified my code, which before had another async VI which registered to the daqmx event and sent a broadcast to the helper loop. This is much nicer. 

The drawback is that the DQMH event scripting tool does not support the extra namespace ("Module Events") of the clustered event registration refnums. This results in that every time the Module Request Events get updated the assignment of events to in helper loops event handler gets broken and they need to assigned again manually.

This happens when any kind of request is created. If the request is created for the helper loop this error appears:

This is how my helper looks like after assigning the events again:
(using just a bundle instead of bundle by name for space reasons)

Proposal:

Addition of check to request (and broadcast) creation, that when a helper loop exists and  the event registration refnum for the request events (and probably also the broadcast events) is bundled in a cluster with some other event registration refnum, the extra namespace (eg "Module Events") gets handled and the events can be created and assigned.

When I create a new Broadcast, here's what the new frame in the API Tester looks like:

I almost always end up adding the following code by hand (usually by copying it from another frame):

It seems to me that most of this code could be scripted. Maybe everything except the value of the first format string?

(idea originally posted here)

I would like a right-click plugin where I could right-click a DQMH broadcast subVI and "Find Event Frames". This would search all VIs in my current project for event structures that are registered for the broadcast event fired by the subVI I clicked on, and show me a list of results that I could double-click and be shown the event frames one at a time. Or I guess it could just open all the diagrams for me, since I probably want to walk through all of them anyway.

The operation could take a while, but would be worth it. I often find myself wondering where all the places are in my code that are registered for a particular broadcast.

(idea originally posted here)

Original idea from Matthias Baudot in https://anchor.fm/wired-in-software/episodes/Episode-6---Matthias-Baudot-from-Studio-Bods-emtpti

When you have lots of modules (20+), initializing module selector control tends to take seconds that can be annoying when you need to use the scripting tools.

Finding a way to remove this init time would greatly improve the user experience in large application development.

As mentioned in DQMH Forum: VI Reentrance issue VIs which are required to be non-reentrant are not reported from the DQMH validation tool if they were changed (e.g. to shared clone)

Some of the important VIs which should be reported:

• Obtain Broadcast Events.vi
• Obtain Request Events.vi
• Clone Registration AE.vi
• Start Module (is already reported)
• Basically all used FGV's

Steps to reproduce:

1. Create Project with a new clonable module
2. Change all non-reentrant VIs to shared clone
   

    

3. Run module validation and execute fix
   1. Start Module.vi will be updated and changed
4. Rerun module validation
   1. No issues reported

When creating new module, I'd like a way to add a text explaining its responsibility. It will reinforce good conception practices and allow Antidoc to retrieve information to generate a valuable documentation.

Note: IMO, this content should be added to the module lvlib description.

If this field could optionally mandatory to create the module, I would find this great 🙂

The below image comes from the Error Reported broadcast event case in the API Tester (as found in the default Singleton or Cloneable DQMH module templates):

This produces strings that look like this:

This could be improved by adding the "message" component of the error, by using the Simple Error Handler.vi.  Using the message makes the error report more descriptive, and doesn't rely on the user having to use "Explain Error" to review what the error code's could possibly be related to.

This produces strings that look like this:

Observe that the error message is now present in the text.

When I need one of the reply payload values of a Request and Wait for Reply VI, I need to unbundle 100% of the time. What if the Request and Wait for Reply VI output the reply payload elements individually on the VI conpane so I don't need to unbundle? I often make this change manually to my Request and Wait for Reply VIs. And I never unbundle the error from the payload, since it's already merged into the error stream inside the VI. So I wouldn't expect that output to be on the conpane. But all the other payload parameters, you betcha!

(idea originally posted here)

Reviewing somebody's DQMH code I noticed an error generated in the exit case where they had cleanup code (1) was not captured by the Tester. This is purely because the exit case causes the MHL to terminate (2), so the normal error handling strategy (3) doesn't work (enqueuing another job called Error). Can I propose, unless there's a better technique, that adding the "Error Report" broadcast at the end of the Exit case (4) is a simple way to ensure any errors generated here get reported.

Add Error Broadcast in MHL Exit Case

Hi, I would suggest adding a boolean called 'Include Dependencies' to the function on the scripting API to search for DQMH modules on the project, sometimes we have projects and we call DQMH Modules not listed on the project itself, but the developer should be aware we are calling those DQMH modules under dependencies, the Panther Dashboard for DQMH already is searching for DQMH modules under dependencies but it would be great if the native function does this functionality, also, I suggest adding a boolean array output to know if the resulting modules are located under dependencies or they are in the project.

This is how I visualize the connector pane of the 'Get DQMH Modules in Project.vi'

Thank you!.

I feel like a DQMH module isn't "valid" if its Main VI or its Tester are broken. Right now a module with either of these VIs being broken can pass all validation tests. If something goes wrong after I've run some module "fixers" (or perhaps an external factor has caused my module to become broken without my knowledge), the DQMH Validate Module tool seems like a good place to let me know about it.

When adding a new event, I think it would be really nice if the scripting code that adds the new case structure case to the main VI also scans the event description for formatting tags, and then applies them to the new case's subdiagram label. That way the subdiagram label will be formatted exactly the same way as it appears in the VI documentation. For those of us who adhere to the convention of bold facing control names as we mention them when writing VI documentation.

Hi,

In order to reduce the number of clicks to launch a DQMH scripter, that would be great to be able to launch them from the LabVIEW New... menu !

Indeed this window has several advantages :

1. The tree view keeps its layout from one excution to another. So if the last thing I did from that window was to launch the 'New Event...' scripter, next time I'll launch this window this item will be directly accessible
2. It allows inserting the created code into the project or not. So to create quick code without adding it to the currently open project, this is quite usefull
3. The tree view makes easier to choose the scripter to launch. With Tools menu, if the mouse pointer accidently leaves the menu and overs another menu entry, you've got to go back and re-do some of the menu selection process
4. A LV keyboard shortcut can be added to the New... action. In my case I redirected the CTRL+N shortcut to launch the 'New...' window instead of triggering the 'New VI' action. It would allow me to launch a scripter with 1 keyboard shortcut + 1 double click ! Quite fast !

Running the validator on bigger projects takes quite long.

Would it be possible to speed up the process by running the validation of the modules in parallel?

Additionally: Also in CI/CD we know if the module has changed at all. It would be nice if the cli-module-validation could be called with a .lvlib instead of a .lvproj. Therefore, it could be handy to have a VI which lists all dqmh modules in a .lvproj.

Original idea from @FabiolaDelaCueva 

Sometimes you could need to unregister broadcast events. To do this you want to use the Broadcast Events--cluster.ctl, but it's set to private scope (it's totally fine).

Having a public wrapper to this control just giving access to the type and not the current event like you can get with Obtain Broadcast Events For Registration function would be great.

Considering providing a fixer to add this wrapper to all other existing modules.

Prior to DQMH 5, I would sometimes see developers add a VI reference output from Start Module.vi to the cloneable Main VI instance that was running:

This was sometimes convenient for the calling code, like in cases where you needed to insert the cloneable main VI instance into a subpanel or something like that. Unfortunately, you cannot use the same approach with Start Asynchronous Call in DQMH 5.0 and later. The VI Reference output from Start Asynchronous Call cannot be used for similar purposes. So you can't output the VI reference that was used to start the async call and expect your code to work the same. Instead, you'll likely want to create a request to the module that will use the "This VI" constant within the main VI instance itself to perform whatever operation needs to be done on the main VI instance. 

I propose there be a new DQMH Validate Module test that detects cases where the VI Reference output of the Start Asynchronous Call function is wired:

This is more of a question or request for comments than an actual feature request:

In the dialogue window for creating a new DQMH module, should we rename the caption "Module Type" to "Module Template"? For a vanilla installation of DQMH, there are only two templates to choose from (Singleton and Cloneable), so the caption makes sense. Once you start adding your own templates, not so much anymore. Also, for documentation purposes, it would make things clearer if we separated the term "type" from the term "template".

In addition, it would be nice to see the actual type of the module (singleton or cloneable) added to the name in the dropdown list (see screenshot).

Opinions?