National Instruments Corporation

Todd Brower

Hugo A Andrade

Bob Mitchell

Samson L DeKey

Jogen Pathak

Abhay Shah

Abhay S Shah

A system and method for controlling a computer-based instrumentation system which provides simplified application development and improved performance for instrumentation systems. The present invention provides a system including a software architecture which defines the control and management of an instrumentation system. The present invention includes a base object class, an object manager, session and resource classes, and one or more resource templates. The instrumentation system of the present invention provides a plurality of instrument control resources which are used as building blocks to create instrument drivers and higher level applications. The present invention also uses object oriented technology which allows device resources to be easily combined to create higher level applications. The present invention is independent of I/O interface type, operating system, and programming language while also providing a common look and feel and consistent API to the user. The present invention includes novel methods for access control, event handling, resource management, and resource addressing, among others.

System and method for controlling an instrumentation system

A method and apparatus for controlling instrumentation systems and for providing a user with the capability to develop instrument drivers and application software for controlling instrumentation systems. The present invention provides a system including a software architecture which defines the control and management of an instrumentation system. The method of the present invention utilizes a device resource independence approach whereby the individual capabilities of devices are broken down into a plurality of objects called resources and these resources are then used to develop instrument drivers or instrument control applications. The method of the present invention also uses object oriented technology which allows device resources to be easily combined to create higher level applications. The present invention is independent of I/O interface type, operating system, and programming language while also providing a common look and feel and consistent API to the user. The present invention includes novel methods for access control, event handling, resource management, and resource addressing, among others.

Method and apparatus for controlling an instrumentation system

A system and method for improved handling of events in an instrumentation system which provides numerous features and advantages over prior art methods. The present invention provides simplified application development and improved performance for instrumentation systems. The instrumentation system of the present invention provides event queueing, event handling, and suspend handling features, thus providing the user or developer with greater freedom in designing his test and measurement or process control application. The present invention includes a single operation referred to as viEnableEvent which is used for enabling events of all event types, and a single operation for installing handlers for all event types, referred to as viInstallHandlr. The operation viEnableEvent includes one or more parameters which can be specified as a filter to qualify the types of events desired to be received at the time of the event occurrence. This provides the user with greater control over which events are specified to be received. The present invention further includes an auto-acknowledge capability which enables a resource to automatically provide an acknowledge to an instrument generating an interrupt. An auto-enable feature is included for resources within the system which provides that if there are multiple sessions, the first session for which events are enabled enables the respective event receiving hardware, and the hardware remains enabled until the last session has been disabled. The present invention further provides several different mechanisms for generating interrupts within the system. For example, a user application can cause a resource to signal a session that an event has occurred, thus enabling the user application to create events within the system. Alternatively, an event can be generated internally to a resource and constructed within a resource. Further, an asynchronous notification method is provided whereby an event could be generated by a first resource and trapped by a second resource.

System and method for handling events in an instrumentation system

A system and method for developing instrument drivers and applications in a computer-based instrumentation system. The present invention provides simplified application development and improved performance for instrumentation systems. The instrumentation system of the present invention provides a plurality of instrument control resources which are used as building blocks to create instrument drivers and higher level applications. The present invention also uses object oriented technology which allows device resources to be easily combined to create higher level applications. The present invention is independent of I/O interface type, operating system, and programming language while also providing a common look and feel and consistent API to the user. A developer creates a resource in the VISA system by first determining if the desired resource can inherit from a currently existing resource. If the resource desired to be created can inherit from an existing resource, then the developer creates session and resource classes from the base classes that are being inherited from. If the developer determines that a resource does not currently exist from which the resource can inherit, then the developer inherits from the base session and resource classes provided in a VISA system. After either of the above steps, the developer creates an interface description language for the resource and session classes that have been created for the resource. The interface description language describes the interface for the session and resource classes created for the session. The developer then creates the code which supplements and/or overwrites the code in the existing resource that was inherited from. The code is created to provide operations, attributes, and events for the new resource. Once the code has been created and debugged, then a resource has been created for controlling the particular instrument. In a similar manner, various other types of instrument drivers in higher level instrumentation applications can be created by inheriting from existing resources.

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Austin, TX, United States of America

Todd Brower