Is there published Teststand 3.5 sequence file specifications?

[Geoff@Raytheon]

We have a heavily customised Teststand 3.5 / CVI / Labview application that I am required to document.

I was going to write a utility to parse sequence files to return various properties and dependancies but have been unable to locate documentation as to the structure of the sequence file.

Is this documentaion avaliable? or is there a NI utility, or built-in functionality to the sequence editor, so that I may be able to list sequences, subsequence calls, etc to allow me to document our various testing processes.

(oh and before suggested, I am unable to upgrade from our current configuration, as it is a controlled application) 

Thankyou  

Our System:

Teststand 3.5

CVI  8.0.1

Labview 8.2

[RayFarmer]

Hi,

There already is a documentation tool in the Tools menus under Documents... or Documentation.

This should give you the sort of information you need. The source is also available incase you need to modify the tool.

Regards

Ray Farmer

[Eric_B.]

Hi Geoff,

Ray is correct, there is a Sequence File Documentation... option under the Tools menu which will export the information about your sequence file to an HTML or text file.  The source can be found at <TestStand 3.5>\Components\NI\Tools\DocGen\docgen.seq if you need to modify it.

[Geoff@Raytheon]

Thanks for the assistance, I have tried the documentor, whilst being useful, for the amount and size of the sequences/sub sequences/labview & cvi modules it produces very extensive documentation.

Primarilly I was seeking a quick way to get an overview of all the module inter-relationships, as any one of our test routines may have hundreds of subsequences and adapter calls.

Many of which are shared amongst other primary test sequences.

[RayFarmer]

Hi,

I know you mentioned that you can not up date.

But maybe you could put your sequences files throught TS 4.x so that you can use the new sequence file viewer, that's assuming you have the latest TestStand version available to you.

Regards

Ray Farmer

[Eric_B.]

Geoff,

You can check out the source of the documentation generator in the docgen_html.seq file under your TestStand folder, then Components\NI\Tools\DocGen .  This is the file used to create the large HTML report.  You should be able to look at the sequence file and edit it to only output the information you are looking for.  For example, in that docgen_html.seq file, there is a Step Doc sequence used to output the information for every step.  You could place an if statement in there to check if the step is a sequence call and only document the step if it is a sequence call.  Before you make changes to this file, you should make a backup of the DocGen directory just in case a file gets changed and later you want to go back and use the original documentation generator.

I know you can not upgrade to 4.1, but I can show you a feature that is new in 4.1 - Display File Hierarchy.  This allows you to view your sequence file and the subsequences it calls in a graphical way.  You can also view the hierarchy using the Single Pass or Test UUTs process model to see what other sequences get called when you use a certain process model.  The hierarchy.gif file attached is a picture of the hierarchy generated from the computer.seq file in the Examples\Demo folder that comes with TestStand.  This sequence calls two subsequences, CPU Test and CPU Diagnostics.  Again, I know upgrading is not a possibility for you currently, but you might be able to use this as leverage to upgrade for any future projects that where you use TestStand.