RT deployment issues (XML, remote panel, cluster refs)

[pneumann]

We're trying to deploy our RT program to our sbRIO so that it will auto-boot our VIs. We have created a Build Specification. It builds and deploys our application to our sbRIO. It auto-boots when turned on but our program behaves differently as an application. 

My first thought was to setup a Remote Web panel so we could see our main RT VI front panel. Following all of the directions and double checking everything.  We can load our HTML Remote panel web page while our application is running. At first, it displays a message "Downloading panel 0.00% of 0 bytes" with an empty slider beneath it but then in a second it displays "Remote panel connection is closed". So no luck there.

From what we can tell, it looks like our XML files are not being read in properly. I've seen that OS-specific XML DOM parser is not supported in applications. We're only using "Read from XML File" and Unflatten from XML" system VIs. One can open up and look at these two system VIs. I don't see any DOM components to them. I don't see any OS-Specific calls.

Lastly our application is quite large and complex. To manage the complexity, we have created several large clusters which are passed down to subVIs through cluster references. I suspect that cluster references are Not supported in applications since there is no front panel. If this is the case, I assume then that our only alternative is to create a system global variables for each of the large clusters then replace all of our cluster references with its corresponding cluster global variable. Correct? Copying these large clusters up and down the subVI hierarchy would certainly reduce the performance of the system.

Appreciate any feedback. Thanks.

-Paul

[Christian_L]

Which version of LabVIEW are you using?

Front panel references will indeed not work in a built LabVIEW RT executable due to the lack of the front panel. If you are using LabVIEW 2009 you can use the new Data Value Reference to pass a reference to your data cluster into your subVI. This will avoid making unnecessary copies of the data in the cluster. Otherwise a global or preferably a functional global variable (FGV) can be used to access the data in different parts of the application. The FGV can help you to prevent making additional data copies when accessing specific items in your cluster.

I also tested reading an XML file in a built RT EXE using the two functions you mentioned and it does work for me in LV 2009.