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LabVIEW is a graphical programming language from National Instruments.
The name "G" has been used for the programming language. "LabVIEW" then refers to the environment.
Originally released for the Apple Macintosh in 1986, LabVIEW is used for data acquisition, instrument control, and industrial automation on a variety of platforms including Microsoft Windows, various flavors of UNIX, Linux, and Mac OS.
LabVIEW programs are called virtual instruments often abbreviated to VIs. Each virtual instrument has two components, a block diagram and a front panel. Controls and indicators on the front panel allow an operator to input data into or extract data from an already running virtual instrument.
Most importantly LabVIEW or more accurately "G", introduces the concept of 'Data Flow and Data Dependancy'. That is, execution order is controlled not by sequential instruction execution as with traditional programming techniques. Rather programmme flow is controlled as data becomes available from a node. Thus execution order/flow can be somewhat diffrent than using the more traditional coding techniques C, Visual Basic, or Python.
In terms of performance, LabVIEW includes an actual compiler that produces native code for the CPU platform, so the graphical code is compiled, rather than interpreted. The compiler performance is considered sub optimal when compared to C. However this is considered more than offsett by the unique patented graphical code design system.
The most capable alternatives to LabVIEW would be text-based programming languages such as C, Visual Basic, or Python; however, these approaches require specific skills to use that LabVIEW avoids - the graphical approach allows non-programmer users to construct sophisticated systems by simply dragging and dropping virtual representations of the lab equipment that they are already used to, allowing them to remain focused on their application instead of the details of arcane programming languages. Often another reason LabVIEW is implemented is the availability of LabVIEW drivers for data acquisition cards.
The main competitor for instrument control and data acquisition is perhaps Agilent VEE.
An alternative driver framework for Linux is the Comedi driver library.
One of the main benefits of LabVIEW is that people with little or no previous programming experience are able to access hardware input / output more rapidly and through a hardware abstraction system. This abstraction allows isolation between hardware implementation and software solution. A technique which without National Instruments software driver interface would be extremely time consuming. National Instruments proposes that people with little or no coding experience can write programs and deploy test solutions in a reduced time frame when compared to more conventional or competing systems.
The newest version of LabVIEW is version 7.1.
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