7.1 -> 8.0 port: Datalog file format change?

[bob_miller]

Hi,

I am porting a large LV7.1 application consisting of an RT application running on
a cFP2020 controller and a host application which runs on one or more PCs
networked to the fieldpoint

I had hoped that I could port the "host" (client) application first, since all communication
to the fieldpoint application is via TCP-IP and FTP'ed datalog files, but it seems this is
not to be. The file format of the datalog files has changed: the ported host application
pops up a dialog box asking permission to reformat the files in a way that will render them
unreadable to a 7.1 application. This could almost be manageable, for the short term, but
the reformatting changes the file size, which breaks my mechanism for identifying new
and changed files on the fieldpoint server that the client needs to upload via (slow) FTP

What is the nature of the change? is it a header change or a per-record change or both?
Are the ported file sizes always bigger, always smaller, or indeterminate?
Can it be turned off via any reasonable mechanism? Can the dialog box be turned off
(e.g. answered programmatically)? I will need to modify my  client code to
deal with this, and I worry about porting my database files to the new format while any
potential of accessing/corrupting these files with a LV7.1 application exists.

Bob

[Prashanth]

Hi Bob,

I wrote a simple program to save (as datalog file) ten I32 numbers in both LabVIEW 7.1 and 8.0 and saw that they do differ in size slightly which leads me think that the format has been modified from before. I am not sure how the internal binary storage structure has been modified. However, until you completely migrate over to LabVIEW 8.0, I suggest you make a back up copy of the 7.1 datalog file so that after the file format conversion to 8.0, you can still access the data, if you ever have to, in 7.1 datalog format.

Also, you can use the line below in your LabVIEW.ini file to get rid of the pop up window every time you open a LabVIEW 7.1 datalog file in LabVIEW 8.0

‘SilentDatalogConvert=True’

Once all portions of your code is converted to LabVIEW 8.0, you wouldn’t have to worry about juggling the datalog file between different versions of LabVIEW.

Have a great day!

Regards,
Prashanth