LabVIEW 8.2.1 Datalogging and Supervisory Control Module Readme

February 2007

This file contains important information about the LabVIEW 8.2.1 Datalogging and Supervisory Control (DSC) Module, including installation and upgrade issues, compatibility issues, and changes from the DSC Module 8.0. Refer to the LabVIEW Upgrade Notes and to the LabVIEW Datalogging and Supervisory Control Module Release and Upgrade Notes for more information about upgrade and compatibility issues, a complete list of new features in LabVIEW 8.0, and installation instructions. You can access the LabVIEW Upgrade Notes by selecting Help»Search the LabVIEW Help in LabVIEW and navigating to the LabVIEW Documentation Resources book on the Contents tab. You can access the LabVIEW Datalogging and Supervisory Control Module Release and Upgrade Notes by selecting Help»Search the LabVIEW Help in LabVIEW and navigating to the DSC Module»DSC Module Related Documentation topic on the Contents tab.

Refer to the labview\readme directory for readme files about LabVIEW add-ons, including the DSC Module.

Supported Platforms
Installation Instructions
Installing the LabVIEW Datalogging and Supervisory Control Module Silently
Licensing
DSC Module 8.2 Features and Changes
Known Issues
Bug Fixes
Documentation Additions

Supported Platforms

The DSC Module supports Windows Vista/XP/2000. The DSC Module does not support Windows NT/Me/98/95/Server 2003. Refer to the LabVIEW Datalogging and Supervisory Control Module Release and Upgrade Notes for a complete list of system requirements.

Installation Instructions

Refer to the LabVIEW Datalogging and Supervisory Control Module Release and Upgrade Notes for installation instructions. The following list describes additional installation considerations.

Installing the LabVIEW Datalogging and Supervisory Control Module Silently

You can control programmatically which features in the DSC Module distribution to enable or disable for installation. You therefore can install a subset of the DSC Module distribution silently. Refer to the silent_install.txt file in the Bin directory on the LabVIEW Datalogging and Supervisory Control Module CD for more information about installing the DSC Module silently and about feature selection automation.

Licensing

Refer to the LabVIEW Release Notes for more information about licensing in LabVIEW.

DSC Module 8.2 Features and Changes

Refer to the LabVIEW Help for programming concepts, step-by-step instructions, and reference information about the DSC Module 8.2 features. Access the LabVIEW Help by selecting Help»Search the LabVIEW Help.

Printing Alarms and Events

Use the Alarm Printer I/O server to print alarms and events that LabVIEW processes generate. You can print all available information about an alarm or event, or you can select the information you want to print.

Right-click My Computer or a project library name in the Project Explorer window and select New»I/O Server from the shortcut menu to display the Create New I/O Server dialog box. Select Alarm Printer from the I/O Server Type list and click the Continue button to display the Configure Alarm Printer Instance dialog box. After you configure and deploy this I/O server, LabVIEW prints any alarms or events that LabVIEW processes generate to the printer you specify.

Refer to the LabVIEW Help for more information about printing alarm and event data.

Programmatically Creating and Configuring I/O Servers

Use the Create and Configure IO Server Express VI to create or configure an I/O server programmatically. You can use this VI to create or configure a Modbus, ModbusSlave, or OPC I/O server. The configuration dialog boxes you use to configure the I/O servers are the same as those that appear when you create an I/O server from the Project Explorer window. However, you also can use the Create and Configure IO Server Express VI to modify the configuration of an I/O server at run-time.

Use the Create and Configure IO Server Express VI with the Create Process and the Create Shared Variable VIs to create or configure a process without using a LabVIEW library.

Use the Delete IO Server VI to delete an I/O server programmatically.

Refer to the LabVIEW Help for more information about creating and deleting Modbus, ModbusSlave, and OPC I/O servers.

Committing Multiple Shared Variables Simultaneously

Use the Commit Shared Variables VI to commit multiple shared variables to the Shared Variable Engine simultaneously. Use the set mode input of the Create Shared Variable VI to buffer shared variables that you create. Use the Property Set Mode property of the SharedVariableIO class to buffer shared variables that you modify. Then use the Commit Shared Variables VI to commit an array of buffered shared variables simultaneously.

Other New Features

The DSC Module also adds the following new features:

DSC Module 8.2 Changes

The DSC Module 8.2 includes the following miscellaneous changes:

Known Issues

Bug Fixes

The following table lists the bugs fixed in the DSC Module 8.2.1.

Bug IDFixed Issue
4258E9IQFixed an issue where the DSC Module might crash if you use the Historical Trend Express VI for a long period of time.
3ZUF8RZUFixed an issue where the DSC Module might crash if you programmatically disable alarms on a shared variable.
44B226V9Fixed an issue where the DSC Module OPC I/O server does not support the OPC OLE date format.
416F6OG0Fixed an issue where the DSC Module OPC I/O server does not allow binding to some Boolean-typed OPC items.
428EK24JFixed an issue where the DSC Module OPC I/O server loses synchronization with other OPC servers if the OPC server updates values rapidly.
41699OJ0Fixed an issue where the DSC Module returns an error if you export data to a .csv file and then import the same file into the Multiple Variable Editor.
43J7I6UFFixed an issue where the DSC Module might not report alarm setpoints correctly if you programmatically adjusted the setpoints.
40H8CBV9Fixed an issue where deployment of shared variables that are bound to I/O servers takes a long time.
435FR3VBFixed an issue where the Configuration (.scf) File Migration dialog box does not enable you to specify a folder to store the database files.
45IE89V9Fixed an issue where the Acknowledge Alarms VI does not acknowledge alarms by instance if the alarms are user-defined or contain alarm in the variable names.

Documentation Additions


Copyright

© 2007 National Instruments Corporation. All rights reserved.

Under the copyright laws, this publication may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storing in an information retrieval system, or translating, in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of National Instruments Corporation.

In regards to components that use Citadel 5, the following copyright applies. Copyright © 1994 Hewlett-Packard Company. Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute and sell this software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appears in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. Hewlett-Packard Company makes no representations about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

Trademarks

National Instruments, NI, ni.com, LabVIEW, and Citadel are trademarks of National Instruments Corporation. Refer to the Terms of Use section on ni.com/legal for more information about National Instruments trademarks.

Other product and company names mentioned herein are trademarks or trade names of their respective companies.

Patents

For patents covering the National Instruments products, refer to the appropriate location: Help»Patents in your software, the patents.txt file on your CD, or ni.com/patents.