The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Feb. 10, 1998
Filed:
May. 10, 1995
Abhay S Shah, Austin, TX (US);
Jogen Pathak, Chandler, AZ (US);
Bob Mitchell, Austin, TX (US);
Hugo A Andrade, Austin, TX (US);
Samson L DeKey, Austin, TX (US);
Todd Brower, Austin, TX (US);
National Instruments Corporation, Austin, TX (US);
Abstract
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.