High-level datatypes in the Distributed System Manager

[JKSH]

Hello,

My company uses the DSM to probe network-published shared variables, for on-site troubleshooting. However, as the DSM can only show values of primitive datatypes, our solution has been to use primitive variables only, rather than grouping variables in clusters. This lets us probe the variables outside the development environment.

The downside of this approach is an explosion in the number of shared variables in our software, and a lack of structure in our data types -- the only possible structure is in the variables' naming conventions, which would then end up being quite long. Our block diagrams also grew larger, as shared variable icons take up lots of screen space.

I was wondering if anyone has any ideas on how we could do things differently? Our main requirement is the ability to probe variable values in a production environment; being able to enforce a structure upon our program's datatypes is a big bonus.

Thanks!

P.S. Out of curiosity, is there a technical reason why a cluster's contents can't be shown in the DSM?

[WesWNI]

Hello JKSH,

Unfortunately, as you have already noted, at this time the DSM is not able to display the individual values of an array or cluster's components. This may be noted in the help file linked below for the Distributed System Manager. Currently, this is simply a limitation of the software and is expected behavior. However, this feature has been noted and suggested to R&D as a possible addition to future versions of LabVIEW. You may also support this idea by going to the Idea Exchange, also linked below, and voting for this to be added in to a future release of LabVIEW. Otherwise, the naming convention you have suggested below may be the best method at this time for grouping your Shared Variables.

http://zone.ni.com/reference/en-XX/help/372572E-01/sysman/using_watchlist/  (Monitoring Variables with the Watch List View) 

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Real-Time-Idea-Exchange/Distributed-System-Manager-Display-Cluster-V...  (LabVIEW Real Time Idea Exchange)