"Data Source" as addable item in projects, or as an Express VI

[Mads]

Possible scenarios:

A) You right-click in your project and instead of adding a new target e.g...you can add a data source. This data source could be a web service, an XML file (eithe local or at a http address...), an ODBC database, a modbus TCP/IP register etc. etc. You can now access the data from this by dragging the source icon in the projects list onto your block diagram. This would give you a reference and polymorph accessor VIs.

B) You drop a data source express VI onto the diagram and it pops up with a dialog that allows you to select the type of source.

C) Perhaps we could even integrate this even more; if I right click on a table e.g. I can choose to link it to a data source - and have a wide variety of sources to choose from. Yes, we already have the shared variable or data socket based data binding option, but we should be able to bind it to lots of different, open and industry standard sources.

Mads

[tst]

How would the communication with the data source be managed (e.g. the DB connection, the Modbus properties and communication, etc.)?

[Mads]

That is partially described already in the idea. You could have accessor VIs that will adapt to the reference created for the data source (based on input you provide when defining the source). This could be done very neat and perhaps be based on a plug-in architecture to make it possible to add new types of data sources later, but you could do it in a number of other ways.

The underlying code could be autogenerated, but made available as part of the project (top level easily accessible, with the rest in sub-folders). This is already done with ExpressVIs for other purposes, but it should be made more flexible than just a VI - it could e.g.generate a link handler that will run in the background and process incoming requests from the accessor VIs (which would be the ExpressVI as we already know them). So - if I add a data source I get a configuration window...and based on the choices done there I get a set of VIs in my project that handles the communication with that source. 

[Darren]

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