DSC Wish List

[josborne]

I though I'd take a moment to start a wish list and collect some of my comments on LV DSC. I have become somewhat of a super-user of DSC recently, and have a lot of feedback for any NI people who are following these pages.

Overall, I am very pleased with DSC 6.1, but have a few ideas. I have already mentioned some of these ideas in the Discussion Forums, but here's a collection:

--Speed it up! The DSCEngine and other tools are pretty big and slow. They take a long time to load and run. It'd be great if the tools could start faster (particularly the DSCEngine and the Tag Configuration Editor).

--Double-click on an SCF file and it opens in the Tag Configuration Editor automatically.

--Option-click on an SCF file and allow the user to choose "Launch Engine With This SCF file".

--Don't force users to run compiled EXEs that contain DSC VIs in the DSC Run-Time folder. It'd be nice if we could run them in a different location.

--Get rid of that dialog that pops up when you shutdown the DSC and you have a client connected to the OPCLabVIEW OPC Server: "There are x OPC Clients attached to LabVIEW IA OPC Server. Do you still want to quit?". Or allow it to be disabled.

--Enable Tag Engine to run as an NT Service. If the power goes out, it will allow the Engine to start again when the PC restarts (without enabling automatic login to windows).

--This is a complicated one: Allow users to connect to DSTP or OPC items that are "arrays of doubles" and log them to citadel as an ordinary analog tag. For example, we have a DSTP URL that contains an array of doubles. These are a series of temperature values at time t0, t1, t2, t3. It is periodically updated with subsequent values t4, t5, t6, t7... and so on. On that URL, we also have an attribute (another array of doubles) that contains the timestamps for each value. It'd be cool if the DSC Engine could read this URL and log it straight to Citadel. Right now we have our own device driver that reads the values and adds them to the input queue... but it has some performance problems.

--Allow users to disable the splash screen that appears when starting the DSCEngine.

--Allow different alarms on string tags. For example, allow the user to setup an alarm that occurs when a string tag equals "error" or something like that. Right now we can only set Bad Status alarms on string tags.

--Allow the user to open the Tag Configuration Editor without totally opening the Run-Time System. It'd be nice if the editor were a fast, little app like the Tag Monitor that could be run without opening DSC.

--How about changing the name? Heh heh... LabVIEW DSC gets a bit confusing to say. Everyone here keeps calling it LabVIEW DCS. Also, I think the word "datalogging" confuses a lot of people. You see a lot of posts in the Dicussion Forums about "datalogging" in general... but have nothing to do with the DSC toolkit itself. Why not LabVIEW SCADA?

[Katie S]

Dear Sir,

I am the product manager for the LabVIEW Datalogging and Supervisory Control (DSC) Module. Thank you for your suggestions. I have discussed them with our R&D manager. We will work to address them as quickly as is feasible. In the future, please feel free to post any suggestions to Product Feedback (choose Contact NI above, and then select Product Feedback) or please contact me directly.

Thank you,

Katie Shiels
Product Marketing
LabVIEW Datalogging and Supervisory Control Module
National Instruments
katie.shiels@ni.com

[Helene]

Hello,

I am a new intensive user of Labview DSC 6.1. Is there any possibility to know about the roadmap of Labview DSC?

Thank you

[josborne]

Hi Helene,

I'm not sure what you mean by "roadmap". Are you looking for a general "architecture map" that explains the different software components and how they communicate with each other? The best way to get an overview would be to read the user's manuals and various NI web pages. I'd start here:

http://sine.ni.com/apps/we/nioc.vp?cid=10418〈=US

You will find a whole bunch links on this page that provide info on LV DSC. For example, checkout the application notes on DSC:

http://sine.ni.com/apps/we/nioc.vp?pc=res&cid=10418〈=US&p_0=appnote

And the online demonstration videos at:

http://digital.ni.com/demo.nsf/websearch/2484F51992BC939B86256ABD005245A6?OpenDocument&node=10418_US

And also see the Getting St
arted manual:

http://digital.ni.com/manuals.nsf/websearch/F5984D148CAF106686256AF500569F91?OpenDocument&node=10418_US

Or are you asking about a "plan for the future" roadmap? A roadmap that would explain product developments and plans to address some of the items in my "Wish List" above? If so, that question could only be answered by NI ... and they would probably only give you very vague hints.

[Helene]

Hi John,

thank you for your reply.
I meant a "plan for the future" roadmap, with a list of evolutions to be developed, and the date they would be available. I guess this product roadmap is "private" to NI, but even some vague hints could be of interest to me. From your wish list above, I am mainly concerned with DSCEngine performances.

[josborne]

I have another wish:

The toolbar buttons (and the menus) at the top of the various different apps are all different. Its often confusing to remember how to access a certain functions. I am always getting questions from other users like "How do I open such-and-such" and "where was that button to do such-and-such". I don't have any specific reccomendations, but it might help to look at the toolbars and menus again.

I know I'm being picky, but one suggestion is to make it possible to open the Engine Manager without starting the Engine... I have frequently wanted to do that.

[Uttam Kotdiya]

I had few more wishes to add.

1. Should provide facility to define different alarm message for HI_HI,HI,Lo,LO_Lo alarms.
2. When HTV is in live mode and we set the logging off for the tags then it should not paste last values.
3. When I select any tag say tag1 and edit its alarms setting and then change another tag say tag2 and edit alarm properties of tag2. After that if I open properties of tag1 then it will show values set for Tag2 though it stores correctly in SCF files. This should be corrected.
4. Citadel Database allows only Localtime and Inteval in "where condition" of Sql query. It should also support condition like tag1 > 1 or other logical expressions.