Does NIDAQ 8.8 Support LabView 8.0

[aeastet]

I am using Labview 8.0.1. I when to install the new NIDaq 8.8 when I noticed during the start up that support for 8.0 was not an option. There is support for 7.1 and 8.2 but not for 8.0. What is up with that?

[ninlmartijn]

Hello Aeastet,

Thank you for your forum post. There is no support for Labview 8.0 in the DAQmx divers 8.7.2 (please refer to the readme file) and 8.8. I had a customer who installed 8.7.2, and his express VI were missing. The last driver supporting 8.0 is 8.7.1 .

Best regards,

[aeastet]

That is typical for what I have seen from LabView. I know that I am going to get the company line about we can't support everything. But you can support 7.1 and 8.2. Was 8.0 that much of a flop that you just want to forget you made it?

I guess that I am going to be keeping my C++ programmer much busier from now on.

[RT4CY]

Hi aeastet,

Thanks for the feedback, and I understand your frustrations.  I don't want you to feel I am giving you a line, so here are a couple reasons why we are not supporting LabVIEW 8.0 but still supporting 7.1 and 8.2.

-  R&D needs to test each new driver with the supported version of LabVIEW.  A couple things this affects is development costs, time to push the driver out, etc.  So we typically keep support for the previous 3 versions of LabVIEW.

 -  Overwhelming demand to keep support for LabVIEW 7.1.  This version of LabVIEW is a very stable version, and many of our customers choose not to upgrade from it. 

We do not want to forget our customers who are using previous versions of LabVIEW.  However, you are right, we cannot keep support for everything.  This is why we keep older versions of DAQmx available for download in our Drivers and Updates page.  We also keep all KnowledgeBase articles online which deal with older versions of LabVIEW (see this KB).

Let me know if you have any more questions/concerns.

[GFDGreg]

I am having the same frustration as aeastet.  It disturbs me that your reasoning for continuing to support 7.1 is: "This version of LabVIEW is a very stable version, and many of our customers choose not to upgrade from it."

The versions 8.0 forward are unstable?  Shouldn't you be fixing the stability problems in the newer versions rather than artificially continuing to support an outdated version?

I am insulted that users of 7.1 continue to receive support in DAQmx and I don't as an 8.0 user simply because I bought an "UPGRADE."  I'm even more insulted if that upgrade is unstable and NI has done nothing to fix the problem.

This begs the questions: Which versions of Labview are stable?  Which are not?  How unstable are they?  How does the instability manifest itself?  Are the problems and unclassified errors that I've been digging through my code for not my code at all, but a result of the inherent instability of my "upgrade?"

[stilly32]

CyberMat,

Let me clarify this a little bit. We did not include 8.0 support in part because of testing/maintenence as Rod mentioned - these are the same reasons we dropped support for LabVIEW 7.0. We also are doing our best to keep the driver package size as low as possible, and including all the examples and support for LabVIEW 8.0 does take up more space.  

As for LabVIEW 7.1 support, we have a large installed base of customers using 7.1 that for various reasons can not or choose not to upgrade to later versions of LabVIEW. Among other things, some just don't want to pay for the update, some don't need the upgrade and some (whether right or wrong) have this perception that 7.1 is more stable. Whether it is or not would be better discussed in the LabVIEW forums. I've worked with LabVIEW back from 6.0 and have softspots for each, but I don't percieve a lot of change from the stability standpoint - but those are my opinions. Regardless, we know we have a large set of LabVIEW 7.1 customers that need DAQmx support so we kept it. For LabVIEW 8.0, we changed our packaging with support such that the vast majority of 8.0 users had access to the 8.2 upgrade for free, so our user base for 8.0 is much less.

I believe there are some cases where 8.0 users don't have an upgrade path to 8.2. If you are in this situation, may I contact you offline to help you look for a work around?

Thanks,

Andrew S

Multifunction DAQ Product Support Engineer

National Instruments

[GFDGreg]

Andrew,

Thank you for your reply.  Surely you can see my frustration especially when users of 7.1 "just don't want to pay for the update" or "don't need the upgrade"  and continue to get DAQmx support.

We purchased 7.1 when our company was formed and then upgraded to 8.0 when it came out.  We can't afford to upgrade further (We are very small.), and we don't need the new features in 8.2 forward.  So you can see that we are in the same boat as those 7.1 users, but are penalized because we made one upgrade in the past.

I don't know how 8.0 users got a free upgrade to 8.2.  It was certainly never offered to me.  Yes, contact me offline if you have some ideas on the best way to handle our situation.

In the meantime, could you have a look at this post: http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&thread.id=351937

I am trying to get a handle on the broader implications of this and I asked my most pressing question there.

Thanks,

Greg

[griffindore]

Hi CyberMat,

With the introduction of LabVIEW 8.0 we began offering something called SSP (Standard Service Program) which provides access to phone and e-mail support as well as "free" upgrades. SSP itself is not free, but if someone purchases any software, 1 Year SSP is now included for that software. I want to make sure you don't feel that some customers received a "free" upgrade when you did not. I hope that clarifies things!

[Tomaz79]

Just to clarify: I have LabView 8.0 and a NI cDAQ-9172, which needs NI-DAQmx 8.8, which doesn't support LabView 8.0. So if I want to use the NI cDAQ-9172, I have to upgrade LabView? (with NI-DAQmx 8.8, my DAQ assistant is missing, for example)

Thanks for the answer.

Tomaž

[griffindore]

Hi Tomaz,

The cDAQ 9172 has been supported by NI-DAQmx for quite a while now. You can download and install NI-DAQmx 8.7.1 which will support both the cDAQ-9172 and LabVIEW 8.0. I hope that helps!