modulation session refnum

[PhilG]

In the Modulation Toolkit 4.0, I came across something new (to me at least).  What is a Modulation Session Refnum? It appears to be required by the Reed Solomon Encoding/Decoding VIs and yes, I did find how to obtain one using open and close modulation session VIs.   I did see in theRS encode/decode example that it is opened, passed to both subVIs and then closed.  Normally I will not be using both encode and decode in the same VI.  This seems to be somewhat of a lone wolf - with no other information that I could find.  Can anyone provided information as to what this is for?

[Sastry]

Hi Phil,
When you use LabVIEW and property nodes you may notice that one passes in references. Automatically, the property node updates itself with the values possible for the reference. For example, if you are using NI SCOPE and use scope session to property node, then you will see all scope related values that you can set or get using that property node.

Similarly, Modulation Toolkit Session was created with an intention that we can configure Communications related properties using Modulation Session and property nodes. This way lot of flexibility can be provided not only to the user but also to the product in terms of expansion or modifications.

Typically the way you will use them is :

1. Open Modulation Session. This creates a reference that you can use subsequently to set or get properties.
2. Configure the properties, for example, RS properties like primitive polynomial etc.
3. At the end , make sure you destroy the session by calling Close Modulation Session.

Tomorrow, there might be a need that we may have to add more properties for different coding techniques or whatver it may so that it is seamless.

Please do let me know if I could explain the use clearly.

Regards,
Sastry

[PhilG]

Thanks, Sastry.  I suspected that it might be a first example of something new in Mod Toolkit.  Will we see more integration in the future, perhaps a sort of structure like the RF driver refnums?