How do you "harden" your LabVIEW application?

[jboone]

You are at the point in your development where you have built a functional LabVIEW application for your needs. (For the sake of this discussion, let us consider this to be a LabVIEW for Windows application, something related to either DAQ or Instruments Control.) But, you want to "harden" your application, so that you can deploy it, and have others be successful with it, without calling you each time the application is run.

What are some common steps/techniques you employ to make sure your application is robust? Feel free to consider all apects of the application, including but not limited to:

• User interface design/testing
• Error checking/trapping/handling
• Deployment practices/installers
• Documentation
• Other?

Give your feedback in the discussion thread, with what you consider to be your most important practices to never forget. All levels of users are encouraged to provide your insight. These concepts will be compiled into a presentation at a future User Group Meeting.

Travis Ferguson

[Heyla]

I use LV almost exclusively for process control apps, and what I've found essential is to check user-entered setpoints/etc for valid entries to help in preventing hardware damage or loss of control.  As a part-time user I have no doubt that my techniques are clumsy at best, though they are functional... basic examples are correcting input values to acceptable limits using the Select function, and correcting text entries for problematic characters using Search and Replace.

I think my biggest weakness is error handling... how to elegantly keep the VI running and indicate to the user what the problem is and what to do about it.

Looking forward to learning more on hardening an app.

>>JPL<<