Tired of VBAI / Labview version incompatibilities

[mvonstein]

  Sorry if this sounds like a rant, but it is one!  When is NI going to make the VBAI "Run Labview" step backwards compatible?!?  I can see possibly not supporting a major integer number revision (i.e. Labview 7 -> 8), but IMO it's ridiculous when point (8.5.1 -> 8.6.1) releases break an application!  Yes, I know there are technical reasons for it (IMO mainly lazy programming), but software-wise, it can be done.  Lots of other companies do it.

I love NI product functionality overall, but version incompatibilities among components is by FAR my biggest complaint!  Reminds me of Windows 98 DLL's!

Am I the only one annoyed by this?   Please chime in. 

I'll shut-up now...  

Thanks,
Mike

[NAKeel]

Hi Mike,

The problem that you are experiencing is a matter of release dates.  VBAI is written for LabVIEW 8.5.1 and an updated version for 8.6.1 hasn't been written yet.  We are working on making VBAI compatible with the newest version of LabVIEW, and I apologize for it causing your frustration.  You can always save VI's for a previous version, and save it as an 8.5.1 VI.  This will work with VBAI.  

[PierreB]

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NAKeel wrote:

Hi Mike,

The problem that you are experiencing is a matter of release dates.  VBAI is written for LabVIEW 8.5.1 and an updated version for 8.6.1 hasn't been written yet.  We are working on making VBAI compatible with the newest version of LabVIEW, and I apologize for it causing your frustration.  You can always save VI's for a previous version, and save it as an 8.5.1 VI.  This will work with VBAI.  

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As a note, saving a VI for a previous version does not work correctly in my experience. I went through this yesterday with a support engineer:

1) Try to use a 8.6.1 VI as a custom interface for VBAI and get an error message that anything > 8.5 is not supported

2) Opened the 8.6.1 VI and used the 'save for previous version' option with 8.5 as the target

3) Tried to use the "saved for previous version" VI in VBAI and got an error that there was no VI at the specified location

The support engineer on the phone was able to recreate this sequence of errors on his end as well. The workaround for now involved having to download 8.5.1 and install that as well, and then do the following:

1) Opened the 8.6.1 VI  in 8.6.1 and used the 'save for previous version' option with 8.5 as the target

2) Opened the"saved for previous versio" VI in 8.5.1 and re-saved

3) Specify the downgraded, twice-saved 8.5.1 VI as the custom interface for VBAI

The annoyance for me is not that the VI has to be saved for a previous version, but that the "save for a previous version" feature in 8.6.1 does not work properly.

[NAKeel]

I have verified that there is a corrective action request filed to make the newest version of VBAI compatible with the newest version of LabVIEW.  Pierre, if you can provide me with a service request number I will double check with the support engineer that you talked to to make sure that we file a corrective action request for the save for previous version problem as well.  I apologize for the difficulties that both of you are experiencing, and hopefully we can improve on future versions of the software.

[PierreB]

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NAKeel wrote:
I have verified that there is a corrective action request filed to make the newest version of VBAI compatible with the newest version of LabVIEW.  Pierre, if you can provide me with a service request number I will double check with the support engineer that you talked to to make sure that we file a corrective action request for the save for previous version problem as well.  I apologize for the difficulties that both of you are experiencing, and hopefully we can improve on future versions of the software.

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The service request number is: 7245894.

[NAKeel]

I looked into the problem and the issue is where the code is compiled.  It gets compiled in LabVIEW, so you must have a compatible version of LabVIEW.  This issue should be resolved when the most up-to-date versions of LabVIEW and VBAI are compatible.

[mvonstein]

FYI, this is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about.   I haven't tried the function in this version, but in the past I've had a lot of similar experiences.  Stuff *almost* works (but not quite) and then have to downgrade versions and go through hours of uninstallations / installations.

We have several of your CVS units and it becomes a real management nightmare to keep track of what's on what version.  Please keep this in mind for future releases.

Thanks,
Mike 

[NAKeel]

Thank you for the feedback Mike.  Again, I apologize for the incompatibilities and the problems it causes. 

[LD_QMT]

Should be great if NI would be able to provide a tool to convert a Labview 8.6 vi in a version compatible with vbai 2009. We also have frustrated customers who want to create custom interfaces and can't because of this compatibility issue...

[Brad]

Not sure if you all have heard but the new Vision Builder AI 2009 SP1 (just released) will support saving older versions of VIs to the correct version and recompiling newer versions of VIs that have been saved for previous. So if you have an older VI version, the Run LabVIEW step and Custom UI step will ask if you want to save it to the correct version and it will save a copy with a different name in the correct version of LV. If you have a newer version that was saved for previous, it will just recompile it and save it. This also applies for VIs that need to be compiled for different targets (i.e. the smart camera), so now you can take a VI that was compiled for Windows and use it on the smart camera and VBAI will recompile it for VxWorks for you. For the Run LV step, if the VI is inside an LLB, all VIs in the LLB will be saved in the correct version of LV. 

Hope this helps,

Brad