04-07-2014 10:05 AM
At the company I work for, we use a VI that was created with LabView 2010, and I am interested in upgrading to 2013. The issue is that the VI that we use is very important to our day to day production and if we loose functionality with the VI after I update the LabView software, then things would be really bad. Any thoughts?
04-07-2014 10:10 AM
Nobody can tell nor guarantee you that the update is going to be smooth without ANY errors.
So the best thing to do is: Try it out yourself. Use YOUR hardware and YOUR installation to do a functionality test.
Experience shows that the transition between 2010 and 2013 is most often very smooth; but it also depends on additional stuff like modules/toolkits and 3rd party code (DLLs and similar).
Do you change the OS at the same time (e.g. Win XP => Win 7)?
Norbert
04-07-2014 10:15 AM
Thank you. The computer that the VI is on uses Windows XP, and has the 2010 version of LabView that I want to update to 2013. My concern is that the computer I work on daily uses Windows 7 and has LabView 2013. My plan is to develop VIs from my computer and use them on the XP/2010 computer. I am concerned that I will have issues with the newly created VI if I try to use it on older software.
04-07-2014 10:23 AM
Is the XP/LV 2010 computer staying in that configuration? Microsoft is ending support for XP right about now, so it is worthwhile to make plans now (actually months ago) to plan on upgrading that PC.
If you need to support an XP/2010 PC for awhile, it would be easier to install LV 2010 on your PC as well and work with that environment whenever you need to do work for the old PC, and only use 2013 for the projects that you start now, or are planning on using on PC's that would have LV 2013.
You could work just fine downgrading the development with 2013 on your PC to 2010 on the production machine, but since you are already worried about the risk on the production machine, I wouldn't recommend it.
04-07-2014 01:21 PM
Upgrading from 2010 to 2013 is generally a very simple process, but as always you should be suspicious and do a program validation with a suspicous mind (not just check that it starts).
However, in order to use the VI's from 2013 you'll need to use Save for previous version and that adds another layer of issues, so as mentioned: Install both 2010 and 2013 on the new machine. Upgrade the production machine program from the 2010 and make new programs from the 2013.
On the other hand, it's the same validation procedure with mixed LV versions as adding the 2013 runtime to the production machine and start running from 2013.
So:
Install both 2010 and 2013 on new machine and keep the 2010 version on the production machine for minimal changes.
or
Add 2013 runtime to production machine and validate the recompiled program.
/Y
04-08-2014 02:42 AM
@CJBACRD wrote:
[...] The computer that the VI is on uses Windows XP, and has the 2010 version of LabView that I want to update to 2013. My concern is that the computer I work on daily uses Windows 7 and has LabView 2013. [...]
One possible pitfall could be "bitness". Do you use LV 32bit on both systems?
I recommend you to stick to ONE version only if possible. It makes handling the code base so much easier....
Norbert