Additional NI Software Idea Exchange

To be specific, I am talking about the link below from the 3.x NI License Manager (this is on a VM I use for LV 8.5 development)

It had the nice feature of filling in your computer's information and all the products you are activating as part of the link.  Unfortunately, NI's website no longer supports this pre-filling - using this link in 3.x now just redirects you to the normal result of typing in ni.com/activate into your browser.

My typical workflow with this screen would be to enter my real serial number into the preceding dialog, use this dialog to get the activation link, go back to the preceding dialog and enter in a fake serial number, press next twice to get the activation codes entry dialog, and copy the activation codes into the dialog.

In NI License Manager 4.x, you either need to use web activation (which saves your serial number everywhere) or enter codes manually, requiring a trip to http://ni.com/activate for every product that needs activation (and trying to figure out how the name of an application in License Manager - say "Vision Development Module Runtime" - matches against the website's entries - say "Vision Development Module", "Vision Development Module (FRC)", "Vision Development Module Runtime (FRC)", and "Vision Runtime") and a bunch of e-mail spam if you choose to get a copy of the activation e-mailed to you.  Note that activating LabVIEW alone requires two of these trips (or at least used to), as the Professional Development system and the Application Builder activate separately.

As far as why I often don't want to use the built-in Web Activation, it stores your serial number on the computer.  This leads most (I think LabVIEW 2017 is an exception) versions of LabVIEW to display your serial number in their splash screens and about boxes - this could be visible in a public setting or at a customer site.  It also stores the serial number even after you deactivate it, so if you temporarily activate a tester while you are doing its initial debug, your serial number will be stored for your customer to reactivate (and possibly distribute).

I labelled this as MAX, as there is no License Manager Idea Exchange - in a way this applies to all NI products.

Hi

I would like to be able to simulate XNET devices in MAX (with minimal support). I would not expect these devices to simulate data on the bus. They could help us developers catch some bugs before we integrate with the actual HW.

It would be easier for a developer to be able to create configuration files, databases and test them out without connecting to the actual HW. In most cases, the HW is on a rig which is in use, or the HW is not yet delivered for the rig. We would not need any data on the bus in these cases.

I have been struggling over the past few months, to be able to define databases or use databases and test my configuration UI without the actual HW. And I have faced lot of error with creating multiple sessions, opening sessions after the HW is reserved etc.

I would hope that such errors could be tested and fixed using a simulated device, where the actual messages on the bus are not important.

It would be very good if the DSC llb will be reentrant (vi property -> shared clone reentrant execution).

It's no problem if I work with 50 citadel databases in parallel from executable files. But if I do it from one exe (with reentrant VI that work with citadel) then it works very slowly and very often with critical memory errors... And 50 exe files is not a good solution any way.

Increase the size of the "handles" used to resize the display panes in MAX so that it can be done on a touchscreen interface. It is impossible to "grab" the border between two panes on the MAX window using touch to expand a pane. It would also be very nice if MAX remembered its window/panes positions between sessions.

It makes sense to run the Volume License Manager on a server-based environment.

Typically these environments are managed by the IT departments with restricted access to users.

Managing licenses like it needs to be done with the Volume License Manager is sometimes the responsibility of key-users outside of the IT-department.

With the Volume License Manager have to be operated as an application on the server, this often makes it difficult to get the necessary access rights (remote desktop...) granted from the IT department.

It would be much easier to do the license management via a web based interface provided by the Volume License Management Service.

see also: https://forums.ni.com/t5/Additional-NI-Software-Idea/Remote-Management-of-the-National-Instruments-Volume-License/idi-p/3108997

It should be interesting to can make deploy using command line for automatize the process without to do many clicks with mouse in RAD.