NI WPF and Silverlight

[Bobby_J]

Are there any C# users out there intereseted in WPF and Silverlight with NI products?  Any word on when NI will have WPF support for Meas. Studios ( LEDs, Switches, Graphs, etc.)?

[JonathanN]

Hi Bobby J,

We are definitely researching WPF and Silverlight to determine what benefits we can achieve from using these new frameworks. To aid us in our research and development, could you please answer the following questions:

1. What exact UI components are you wanting to see implemented in WPF? I know you mentioned some of the core UI controls, but I am hoping maybe you can elaborate on this a little.
2. Will you be using Visual Studio 2008 or Expression Blend to develop your UI?
1.  Will you be using just one or perhaps both pieces of software?
3. Are you planning on mostly writing in XAML or sticking to C# and VB.NET?
4. Will you be both the developer and designer of your application?
5. Are you wanting to see WPF and Silverlight controls implemented because you are moving to these new frameworks?
1. If so, do you have a specific reason for moving to WPF or Silverlight?
6. What types of applications are you wanting to develop in WPF or Silverlight?
7. Are you going to be using both WPF and Silverlight or just one of the technologies?
8. Do you happen to use the DAQ Assistant in Visual Studio currently?
   
1. If so, would you like to use the DAQ Assistant with WPF?

It would be great to hear your thoughts!!

Best Regards,

Message Edited by Jonathan N on 04-17-2008 08:20 PM

[Bobby_J]

I was mainly looking for feedback from NI users and their thoughts of this topic.  I'm very interested to see if there is a big Meas. Studio/WPF/Silverlight/C# community that uses NI hardware.

I understand that WPF and Silverlight are new technologies ( SL2 is not even released yet ), but it would be very nice to see NI provide users ( like Microsoft is doing ) on how/where they are going with this technology.  It would also be nice to see our NI/C# community begin adding examples to the forum to show creativity and some cool potential this technology has to offer.  I will try to present some info on my part in the coming weeks.

1. What exact UI components are you wanting to see implemented in WPF? I know you mentioned some of the core UI controls, but I am hoping maybe you can elaborate on this a little.  I would like to see LEDs, Switches, Gauges, Meters, and Graphs for sure.  Include a wide variety of color schemes or instruction on how to allow users to create their own templates for controls.
2. Will you be using Visual Studio 2008 or Expression Blend to develop your UI? Will be using both unless Studio adds more functionality.  Expression does a good job of animations and visual setup.
   1.  Will you be using just one or perhaps both pieces of software?
3. Are you planning on mostly writing in XAML or sticking to C# and VB.NET?   Mixture of both.  XAML allows good initial setup and then use C# for events ( Set guage values during measurements ).
4. Will you be both the developer and designer of your application? Both roles for now.
5. Are you wanting to see WPF and Silverlight controls implemented because you are moving to these new frameworks? Yes, we are moving toward these frameworks.  Probably start creating and porting over apps in late summer when SL2 Final and VS 2008 SP is released.
   1. If so, do you have a specific reason for moving to WPF or Silverlight?
6. What types of applications are you wanting to develop in WPF or Silverlight? I have created some good troubleshooting tools and Classes using WinForms and Meas. Studio 8.1 for our test system ( NI PXI-4110, PXI-6259, etc. ). 
7. Are you going to be using both WPF and Silverlight or just one of the technologies? We will be using both.  WPF will be used for interaction with our NI hardware and products.  Silverlight apps will be created for data visuals of test results.  Like to see waveform graphs with Silverlight for sure.
8. Do you happen to use the DAQ Assistant in Visual Studio currently? Probably will not use.
   
   1. If so, would you like to use the DAQ Assistant with WPF?

[ArnaudF]

A NetworkVariable (or DataSocket) library for Silverlight 2 would be a must for implementing lightweight web-based applications, served from the embedded web server in a PXI, FieldPoint or CompactRio.

Are there plans to release such a library ? (anyway this would be impossible for now with SL2 beta1 because of the 4502-4532 port restriction in the System.Net.Sockets.Socket class)

[JAK]

1. What exact UI components are you wanting to see implemented in WPF? .  I would like to see Switches, Gauges, Meters, and Graphs for sure.  Include a wide variety of color schemes or instruction on how to allow users to create their own templates for controls.   Mainly need high performance graphs.
2. Will you be using Visual Studio 2008 or Expression Blend to develop your UI? Will be using both unless Studio adds more functionality. 
   1.  Will you be using just one or perhaps both pieces of software?
3. Are you planning on mostly writing in XAML or sticking to C# and VB.NET?   Mixture of both.  XAML for layout, code behind C# for functionality.
4. Will you be both the developer and designer of your application? Both
5. Are you wanting to see WPF and Silverlight controls implemented because you are moving to these new frameworks? Yes, we have already implementated other (non data acquisition) applications to WPF.
   1. If so, do you have a specific reason for moving to WPF or Silverlight?  Better layout of controls with XAML, much better data binding, use of code generation tools, much better looking (only applies to end users, of course 🙂  )
6. What types of applications are you wanting to develop in WPF or Silverlight? Port existing complex data acquisition and control system used to perform pulmonary function testing.
7. Are you going to be using both WPF and Silverlight or just one of the technologies? Plan to just use WPF. 
8. Do you happen to use the DAQ Assistant in Visual Studio currently? No
   
   1. If so, would you like to use the DAQ Assistant with WPF?

[Grant_LECO]

Just another set of information.  Not sure if this is the best place to post but I couldn't find your direct email at NI :

We are definitely researching WPF and Silverlight to determine what benefits we can achieve from using these new frameworks. To aid us in our research and development, could you please answer the following questions:

1. What exact UI components are you wanting to see implemented in WPF? I would like to see the WaveformGraph and NumericEdit controls mostly. The others are nice but I don't use them much.  Will you be using Visual Studio 2008 or Expression Blend to develop your UI? I will be using Visual Studio 2008.
2. 1.  Will you be using just one or perhaps both pieces of software?
3. Are you planning on mostly writing in XAML or sticking to C# and VB.NET? I will be using C#.
4. Will you be both the developer and designer of your application? Both.
5. Are you wanting to see WPF and Silverlight controls implemented because you are moving to these new frameworks? I am not porting anything but I don't want to release commercial apps that don't look as professional as possible.  WPF seems liek the next logical step towards customer ready apps.
   1. If so, do you have a specific reason for moving to WPF or Silverlight? I Just that they look more professional.  All my test apps use windows forms and work fine for in house stuff.  For something I'm planning on putting out to the public it only makes sense to use the latest stuff.
6. What types of applications are you wanting to develop in WPF or Silverlight? Customer ready apps that do the exact same functional stuff as my windows forms apps.  I don't need any new functionality, I just want to be able to add all the nice touches that WPF provides.
7. Are you going to be using both WPF and Silverlight or just one of the technologies? Just WPF for now.
8. Do you happen to use the DAQ Assistant in Visual Studio currently? No. I think I used it once a few years ago.  It just doesn't fit for me since the majority of my instrument control is redundant.  Once I get it working I just build on an existing template and go from there.  All that just to say that I don't need to setup my instrumentation for every project from scratch.  I just customize it based on the needs of the current app.
   
   1. If so, would you like to use the DAQ Assistant with WPF?

Grant

[Bobby_J]

I don't mean to rant, but I'm very disappointed in NI on the progress on releasing tools and controls for WPF and Silverlight.  This is the future of .NET development and there has not been a single release for these platforms.  I would have expected at least some basic controls like LEDS and Switches.

I know Measurement Studio team is working hard ( or hoping they are ) in providing customers with development tools for WPF/Silverlight.  I hope to see/hear of some good news in the not-so-distant future.

Could you give us a basic roadmap for Measurement Studio? 

Thanks.

[drohacek]

Bobby -

I appreciate your candid feedback and I'm sorry we're not delivering WPF and Silverlight on a timeline that meets your needs. At this point, I can agree that WPF and Silverlight are the future of .NET UI development. We are currently actively working on these technologies, but are not on pace to deliver a release for these platforms this year or next year. I realize that this is not the good news you are looking for.

As I'm sure you understand, we have resource constraints that require cost/benefit tradeoffs in deciding what to work on. I can share some of our reasons for not accelerating the development and delivery of WPF/Silverlight:

1. The majority of MStudio and NI customers do not switch technologies very quickly. Most of our users are actively using the WindowsForms and ASP.NET-based controls. This means that we have to continue to develop them. The features we add to the UI controls are only the tip of the iceberg. Other technological evolutions demand that we invest significant resources in areas other than WPF/Silverlight. Examples of these evolutions include:
   1. New versions of Visual Studio/CLR (2008/3.5 last year and 2010/4.0 this year or next year)
   2. New operating systems (we released Vista support in 2007, we have to support Windows 7 this year)
   3. 64-bit user mode (in work)
   4. New versions of Internet Explorer (IE 8 this year)
   5. New NI hardware (NI-DAQ revs several times a year, we delivered two releases of NI-Scope support last year)
   6. New 3rd-party hardware (we are actively involved in IVI .NET efforts)
2. We prefer to avoid trying to support the first official release of a Microsoft platform because the first version frequently becomes quickly obsolete (e.g., .NET 1.0, ASP.NET 1.1); the second version of the platform sometimes lacks compatibility with the first, requiring us to duplicate our development and support efforts. For example, as a result of Microsoft abandoning "Managed C++" (.NET 1.0 & 1.1) in favor of "C++/CLI", we had to re-implement some of our libraries and now must support parallel code bases until we can drop support for .NET 1.1.
3. Many of our customers demand long-term support of old platforms.  For example, customers still purchase Measurement Studio for the VB6 support.
4. We want to develop a solid framework that will allow us to deliver high-quality, feature rich components that take full advantage of the unique features of the new platforms. This requires that we invest time not only in development, but also in training so that we know what we're doing. The investments we’re making in this vein for WPF/Silverlight are particularly exciting and should position us to deliver an outstanding set of controls, with great potential for ongoing enhancement. This is also part of the reason we don’t want to trickle out minor controls, such as LEDs or switches – we want to make sure that the framework can support the flagship controls (such as the graph), and building minor controls off-framework can cause compatibility issues. Also, there are some challenging problems that require us to significantly invest in the framework. For example, WPF (being a retained-mode API) is actually much slower than GDI+ for some of our critical use cases, such as high-speed, immediate-update charting. (See http://blogs.msdn.com/timothyc/ for background on this issue).

Your feedback is definitely helpful in that does let us know that support for these technologies is in demand. I hope that you’ll be able to stick with us long enough to see these control libraries delivered and that you’ll be willing to participate in our Beta program, when we have a Beta versions of WPF and/or Silverlight components.

David Rohacek
National Instruments

[Bobby_J]

David,

Thanks for the reply.  I understand the workload that is required to get support for these platforms.  Hopefully after MS releases VS 2010 and .NET 4.0, the technology will be stable enough for tools and direction on getting support for new Measurement Studio.  Just keep us in the loop on any news and I look forward to trying the next Beta:)

[wbadry]

1. What exact UI components are you wanting to see implemented in WPF? I know you mentioned some of the core UI controls, but I am hoping maybe you can elaborate on this a little.
   Mainly Charts and Gauges, but above of all the animation and styles that distinguishes WPF from Windows Forms. Also if 3D can be utilized like that done with Solidworks and LABVIEW.
   
2. Will you be using Visual Studio 2008 or Expression Blend to develop your UI?
   1.  Will you be using just one or perhaps both pieces of software? Experssion Blend is a must when designing compelling UX with WPF
      

1. Are you planning on mostly writing in XAML or sticking to C# and VB.NET? Since Blend is there, no need to touch XAML and the main concentration is on business logic with C# or VB.NET
   
2. Will you be both the developer and designer of your application? Yes, most of the time
   
3. Are you wanting to see WPF and Silverlight controls implemented because you are moving to these new frameworks? Sure
   
   1. If so, do you have a specific reason for moving to WPF or Silverlight? Complelling User Expersience
      
4. What types of applications are you wanting to develop in WPF or Silverlight? Automation and SCADA Based Solutions
   
5. Are you going to be using both WPF and Silverlight or just one of the technologies? WPF
   
6. Do you happen to use the DAQ Assistant in Visual Studio currently? Indeed I do
   1. If so, would you like to use the DAQ Assistant with WPF? It would amazing

Thanks and hope to see something innovating soon.