About Data Socket support in Appl. Builder

[Marce]

Hi,

I'm writing a program that uses Data Sockets. When I plan to distribute the application, using the Create Installer option, I guess I'll have to switch ON the "Data Socket support" in the advanced page. How does it work, when I install the application? Will that option make the Data Server to be installed in the target machine?

Thanks,

Marce

[tst]

When you select the "Data Socket support" option, that's exactly what it'll do. The installer will take care of everything for you. There are a couple of things to remember, though. One is that when you use Datasocket, you have to have the server running for the information to flow between your programs. This is a problem because people can close it manually or it can crash. You should use the DS indicator lights on your controls and indicators which show if datasocket works properly or not or you can try using the DS property nodes. You should also place a DS server icon on the desktop for users to be able to easily open DS server if it closes. The second thing you need to do is place DS server in your startup folder, or run it with your application, otherwise I believe it doesn't load automatically. Also, make sure you set it to start minimized.

[Philip_Courtois]

Great reply, 'tst'!

Here are a few more tips.

Remember that a DataSocket network is consisting of one DataSocket Server and one or several DataSocket Clients (applications using DataSocket Read or Write functions). The Server stores the data items and controls read and write access to the different data items, the Clients read from and write to the different data items. Therefore it is NOT ALWAYS necessary to launch the Server on the same machine as the Client.

Running the executable does not automatically launch the DataSocket Server. If you need to have the DataSocket Server running on the same machine as the executable, you can do as described by 'tst' to manually launch the Server.

What I prefer is to automatically launch the DataSocket Server when the executable is launched. Use the VI described in this KnowledgeBase to launch the Server.

If you are using the DataSocket functions, and NOT the Front Panel DataSocket connections, to connect to your DataSocket items, you will get an error 56 or 63 if the DataSocket Server is closed prematurely and you are trying to read or write to it. By using a Case Structure to check for these errors, you can restart the DataSocket Server again in the case it was accidentally closed.

Good luck!