opening VI's remotely?

[TimS.]

Hello,

I am beginning to use the Web Publishing tool of Labview 8.2. I noticed while using it that one of the biggest problems my company would have is that the VI has to be loaded into memory in order to access it remotely. Is it possible to have one main VI loaded into memory who's sole purpose is to open other VI's which then can be used remotely? Assuming that all the other VI's are configured to be hosted on the web server once opened. What I'm hoping to be able to do is have a main index page on a remote computer with hyperlinks that will allow a user to call up the VI which they need to use even if it is not already running on the host. The only other option I could think of is to remote desktop to the host in order to run the desired VI but this is one step I wish to avoid. Please let me know if this is possible.

Thank You,

Tim Sileo

[jjcimon]

I would try to create a main vi that call all sub vi.

in properties execution you can select for each sub vi 'open when called'

and at the last sequence of each sub vi a close to return to the main vi

jacques

[Britoa]

You can actually run VIs like this through VI server calls, 'application control' --> 'open VI reference' then with the reference, create an invoke node with 'run' selected.  that will run the VI.  You can also control if the front panel opens and such from there.  While playing with it, I had created (and subsequently lost) a VI that would let me send a computer other VIs then run them, it was interesting. 

Hope that sets you in the right direction.

[TimS.]

Thank You for the help. I decided to create a main VI that uses the 'application control' --> 'open front panel' function and allows the user to specify a path to any VI. This works well when using a remote connection. The only drawback I've found is that the paths have to be defined ahead of time or be typed into the front panel on the remote computer (i.e. you can't use the browse button on the remote PC because it only browses locally and not on the host PC with the VI's). Is there a way to have the browse button only look on the host machine for paths and not the remote PC? I ran into this with several other remote VI's as well. I have a VI that reads in binary files and when it is remoted I noticed that I was only able to load binary files which reside on the host PC. However, the browse button only works on the remote pc so I have to memorize where it is located on the host PC in order to access it. This may be an easy fix but I'm relatively new to Labview so I'm kind of lost right now. Ultimately, I wish to be able to load binary files from either the host pc or the remote pc.

Any help is much appreciated.

[Coal_Man]

I have not tried this before, but you could change the Browse Options for the path control and change the start path to a place on the PC where the VI resides.  You can change this by right clicking on the path control and selecting Browse Options. 

You can also create your own browsing control using a listbox and the List Folder VI.  This along with a few property nodes can give you exact control of where to browse.  Here is a simple example that allows you to browse through the folders of your hard drive.

[TimS.]

Coal Man,

Thank you very much for the "file browser.vi" example. It worked wonderfully for my purpose. I only modified it slightly so that I can browse to a vi on the host pc via a remote pc and open it. When the "open Vi" button is clicked it opens it loads it into memory on the host pc and in a new window on the remote pc. When "the close vi" button is pressed it closes it on the remote PC and releases it from memory on the host pc.

Thanks,

Tim S.

[TimS.]

Sorry, wrong file. here is the right one.