Rate the NI software

[myriad360]

I have a client / business "partner" that is buying into Labview and a lot of their database stuff.  It all looks well done, but I am curious from a developer's point of view what people think of it.  I am a web developer myself with a bit of hardware background, but I have never gotten the chance to gut apart NI stuff.

Any feedback would be much appreciated.  Thanks!

[Khalid]

If you plan on developing test / measurement / data-acquistion / control / simulation / automation, etc. applications, I would say LabVIEW is the best! It's easy to interface with the hardware, easy to develop, yet very powerful.

Please post any specific questions you might have.

Thanks,

-Khalid

Message Edited by Khalid on 09-27-2006 12:45 AM

[tst]

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@myriad360 wrote:
I have a client / business "partner" that is buying into Labview and a lot of their database stuff. 

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I know of no "NI DB stuff". LV has a toolkit for supporting (or can support through other means) ODBC, so you can access DBs on Windows like any other ODBC client. The DSC module for LV (which costs some more $) also includes a specific kind of DB, but I believe that would only be relevant for specific areas.

LV itself, as a language, is great (it's much more friendly than most languages), but switching over from text based programming is a paradigm shift not all people easily make. It's definitely more beginner-friendly due to its "you don't have to worry about this" and the "why don't you let us create a wizard to do that" approach.

NI hardware, as far as I know, is supposed to be very good, and their support in general is also said to be good (I'm satisfied, but I simply don't have any real basis for comparison).

[Ben]

See this thread for an earlier discusion on this topic.

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&message.id=33704&query.id=23169#M33704

Now regarding posting a Q like this on a forum for people who love LV.

I would be very suprised if you get any negative contacts.

If you want to here more negative you may want to try posting to slash dot.

I seem to remeber someone on that posting that "LabVIEW is an abomination".

But that was someone who had not learned the beauty in the abomination.

Ben

PS Sorry about the spelling issues. Spelling and syntax are not my strong points. But because I work in LV I do not have to be.  

[BiomedEE]

I assume you mean the database connectivity toolkit, which as mentioned works through the ODBC data sources on windows. It works quite well. I use it often. It works far better than past SQL toolkits ever did and with less work. You can't get around some SQL syntax depending on what your needs are, but you should find the package well setup and useful.

[bburress]

Hi myriad360,
    Here are some useful links about the Database Connectivity Toolkit for LabVIEW.  We use this toolkit extensively here at NI and love it.  Using Microsoft Access, SQL, or other databases is so much easier with these VIs.

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/3563
http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/6429

    I will agree with the previous post that you are not really asking an unbiased source here for info, but we'll be glad to help as much as we can.

[Jaegen]

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@Ben wrote:

See this thread for an earlier discusion on this topic.

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&message.id=33704&query.id=23169#M33704

Now regarding posting a Q like this on a forum for people who love LV.

I would be very suprised if you get any negative contacts.

If you want to here more negative you may want to try posting to slash dot.

I seem to remeber someone on that posting that "LabVIEW is an abomination".

But that was someone who had not learned the beauty in the abomination.

Ben

PS Sorry about the spelling issues. Spelling and syntax are not my strong points. But because I work in LV I do not have to be.  

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This is probably true - you probably won't get a lot of negative feedback here.  However, I choose to see this somewhat differently:  The fact that there are so many of us who use LabVIEW every day, and come here and sing its praises, has got to say something.  Granted, we all benefit from LabVIEW gaining in popularity, but I'd say that's not really the reason why most of us do what we can to promote it.  Here's a little experiment for all the "Champions" and "Proven Active Veterans" out there:  I just found this quote on a slashdot posting:

"Uhg, Labview. For the sake of current and future programmers, I hope they are not going to use the Labview 7 style of programming. Ridiculously complicated flowcharts should not be programs"

How do you all respond to that?  I don't know a single person who has spent any real time working with LabVIEW who feels this way, so I can only assume this person hasn't.

Jaegen

[Ray.R]

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@Jaegen wrote:

"Uhg, Labview. For the sake of current and future programmers, I hope they are not going to use the Labview 7 style of programming. Ridiculously complicated flowcharts should not be programs"

How do you all respond to that?  I don't know a single person who has spent any real time working with LabVIEW who feels this way, so I can only assume this person hasn't.

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LOL :D... 😄 😄 😄

LOL ROFL!!

Good one.  LV7.1... my LV of choice..  Oh yeah!!  Wow..  How does one respond to that..  Well... I let the wires do the talking!

LOL!!!

😄 😄 😄

[devchander]

Personally I feel this.

The kind of efforts by NI to continually improvise LabVIEW speaks a lot about how popular it has been with the developers worldover

Even through we all crib about 'this feature modified, that feature removed' whever a new version is launched, there have always been a lot more beneficial inclusions which has made us like LabVIEW , much more 

I am happy using LabVIEW and its related tools for most of my development activities

[Capuchin]

I've only been working with LabVIEW for a few months, and I have to admit that when I first started learning I thought it was a little ridiculous (I'm more used to working with VB and flash). However there are definite advantages in the ease of data acquisition, and being able to see a large amount of code at one time makes it so much easier to keep track of what you're doing.

One gripe I have (if there's an easy way to do this that I'm missing, please correct me) is no easy way to set variables. For example you want to use an array x by y by z and use those values of x y and z elsewhere in the code, often I end up having to use a long winding wire to get it where I need it. The easiest sollution would be to use a control and property nodes, but in a big program that still means you have to find the control, find the value option in the big list, etc. Whereas in other languages you just type "x".

Yes it's a tiny gripe but it gets me every time.

Overall my experience with labVIEW has been very positive, and I hope to work with it more in the future.