Expandable Mode for Sequence Execution Display

[EMR]

I've encountered on several occassions, especially with complex testing, customers who are frustrated by the inherent 'flicker' that happens when stepping into and out of subsequences of logic. This leads to people opting to not use sub sequences, or creating complex replacements for the execution view that has a more persistant way of presenting the executed step data.

I'd like to see an optional setting for execution viewing that allows for sub sequences to be shown as expandable nodes (perhaps defaulted to 'collapsed') so that low level test operators can see the overview results at the sequence-call level, but so advanced users can expand for details if they're interested without added pulldowns or tabs for additional information.  this could be one more API property similiar to showing one-stepgroup or showing all, so that developers can chose whether to be more efficient, or display-heavy....

In scenarios with dynamic sequence loading, the display might simply show a 'no pre-loading possible' sort of message until the execution actually gets to that portion of the sequence.

Cheers, 

Elaine R.

[j_dodek]

Hi Elaine,

Thats a good idea.

I agree with your notes that users will not create subsequences! The result is that are complex OR MOSTTIMES extremly long

long long and boring subsequences. I am sure, such a feature would help, because you get rid of switching between sequences.

Regards

juergen 

[crossrulz]

To get rid of the "flicker" you can disable tracing for each of the sequence calls (found under Run Options).  This will also help performance.

[EMR]

I agree CrossRulz, that's the second option that my customers go with, but then they have to have on the fly reporting and a second window/tab for users who want to see the details!  I'm looking for some sort of happy medium, where they can see them... sometimes 🙂 

the downside to my idea, of course, is that the copious '+' symbols might make the execution view annoyingly cluttered... so probably they'd have to be optionally configured.

[WiMAX_Eng]

Maybe if you could disable tracing on sub-sequences (or make it a run option on by sequence).  At least then you get tracing on the main sequence and hopefully avoid flicking into and out from sub-sequences.

[Sergey_Kolbunov]

This idea is nothing but displaing subsequences in the tree hierarchy. Right now we have to utilize a separate tree view in our custom OI to display all subsequences hierarchy (in combination with the regular Sequence View, which display a current sequence details). Displaying sequences in the tree hierarchy is one of our customer requests. Still don't have that for Execution View, which we are planning to replace with a custom table. That is bad I could not kudos this idea more than once!

[SachaE]

Lovely idea - it's essentially a tree view style view - have seen this on many customer's built test executives (non teststand) so we should have a "sequencefileview" version 2 with "skins" to show this (or executionview)

Sacha

[RayFarmer]

Maybe you could use this sort of view for Multiple Limit Tests step so you can see all the individual results not just the overall result of the step.

regards

Ray

[Rodéric]

that would be a nice feature, I have to code something to do this exact request for our customers....

[paulmw]

For the execution view portion of this idea (not sure if this is for both sequence file view and execution view), I'd like to add that it would be nice if they started out as 'collapsed' (as you suggest), expand when executed, but then recollapse* when finished with that sub sequence.

*or make the recollapse conditional such as not if there is a fail within the subsequence

Hope NI considers your excellent idea!

[BrianM]

This would be a start in the right direction.

Personally, I'd like an alternative view that only displayed test step results during execution. That's generally all the operators are interested in. (Test step name along with the measured value, upper/lower limits, units)