I have two layers to many of my applications. A GUI layer, where I can customize the visualizations for the user to suit their need or preferences and an underlying control loop/DAQ loop/whatever that supports it. While critical data paths are handled through events, queues, or direct data paths, information to the GUI is displayed more indirectly through Global Variables or setting/reading the property value on the GUI's control or indicator reference. I pass the reference through a global which contains clusters of the references. So program controls like stop, start, logging, etc are under the Program Control References global variable. Alternatively, I use a Global Variable to pass the data back and forth without the reference. This is excellent for passing data to a logging system, since I don't generally mind when I grab my data, so long as it is once a second.
My question is, which do you, fellow LV developers, believe is a better choice? Changing via the property tends to be slower than directly changing a global variable, but Global Variables have that race condition problem. I have heard (and maybe witnessed, not sure) data collissions where a read and a write occur at the same instant. Is this a legitimate concern? From what I understand, this is less of a problem from Property value changes, but I am not sure if that is true.
What would be a safer method? Obviously direct data paths would be safer for the data, but for a control loop, it creates a timing dependancy which I won't allow.
