Active Development?

[CanadaGuy]

Hi, I'm just wondering if anyone can shed light on the state of Actor Framework development within NI. Most of the documentation I see is from 2012-2013 time frame. Are there new examples or old ones that are still under development? Is there a current Actor Framework landing page with all useful links, downloads, etc.? What about bug fixes that are released as part of LabVIEW? Any release notes?

I'm trying to determine whether putting more effort into AF is worth it, or whether there is something else that is more current/active?

[cbutcher]

I'm not sure about the internal "Active Development" but it's certainly actively used.

Some interesting recent presentations on the Actor Framework from this year's NI Week are available here:

Allen Smith's "Efficient Actor Framework Development"

Casey Lamers' "Understanding the Decoupling of Messaging in Actor Framework". During this presentation there was a lot of interesting discussion. I haven't watched the video but hopefully it was well captured. Definitely interesting for more "advanced" use of Actor Framework.

Sam Taggart's "Test Strategies for Project Success". This one compares Unit Testing in DQMH and AF.

Ethan Stern's "Mediated Viewable Actors: Observer, Meet Model-View-ViewModel". I didn't see this presentation during the event, and I haven't watched the video yet, but I include it since it's apparently focused on the Actor Framework.

Some other documentation can be found in links on a previous answer I gave: Actor Framework for Dummies.

I'd say the Actor Framework is definitely "worth it", but there are projects that it isn't a good tool for - if you think that it's a good fit for your project, I don't think there's any reason to be discouraged based on the documentation being a few years old. Around 2012 was I think when the AF was undergoing it's pre-release/release (I wasn't using LabVIEW at the time, so I could be mistaken) and so probably that was when a lot more documentation was being written, read and released.

[CanadaGuy]

Thanks for the links. I think I managed to find several of those already so that is good reinforcement. I really like the idea of AF, and have "used" it, but I think I'm using most stuff incorrectly so I'm looking to fix that.

I did see your previous response, and that was quite helpful to know what to search.

[Eric.M · Accepted solution]

I think the framework is pretty mature as of now so the odds are we most likely will not get a major refine of the framework (maybe in NXG but that's not even certain). It natively ships with LabVIEW, there's a community. There have also been a very decent number of packages and add-ons that extend the AF.

As per fixes, they're included in the traditional Fix List NI publishes every version of LV. Yet that could be nice to have a targetted list for the AF posted to this part of the forums!

--Eric

[CanadaGuy]

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@Eric.M wrote:

I think the framework is pretty mature as of now so the odds are we most likely will not get a major refine of the framework (maybe in NXG but that's not even certain). It natively ships with LabVIEW, there's a community. There have also been a very decent number of packages and add-ons that extend the AF.

As per fixes, they're included in the traditional Fix List NI publishes every version of LV. Yet that could be nice to have a targetted list for the AF posted to this part of the forums!

--Eric

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Thanks, that is what I assumed was the case. I think I've just been using AF wrong and focused a lot on actor templates and worrying whether there are bug fixes for the templates, rather than better understanding the individual VI/class functionalities so I can build from scratch.

[Ironman_]

In computer science the word "mature" has no meaning.

Software is a "moving target" by definition, because every year there are new scenarios, problems, etc.

Example: Linux or Windows are "mature OS", but they are modified every 6 months.

There are definitely things to do in AF, integrate other features into LV (for example: years ago you didn't have the "create messages" automatism), or make things easier, de-clutter things, etc..

So when I hear the word "mature" it's like "we do other things, we have moved on other things".

I don't like Delacor QMH, but it has some features that are not embedded/integrated into AF.

I don't like to manually fix and patch a framework, when there is a company whose mission should be to move forward its own frameworks and software.

[paul.r]

Mature absolutely has meaning - it means that the software has been thoroughly used, vetted of most major bugs, and all major features are implemented. The actor framework is mature - there are no 'todo' comments in the code, no placeholders for future feature adds, no major bugs etc. Of course new features may be added, small bug fixes/improvements may occur, that doesnt mean the framework isn't mature. 

[Eric.M]

And to add to what Paul said (which I agree), software components (libraries, frameworks) answer a specific problem, they have a goal. Once the goal is achieved and the component is bug/risk free, it can be qualified as mature. We are not talking at the application or the solution levels, for which maturity is certainly a vague thing.

The AF has a goal: it is meant to provide an implementation of the actor model. It is what it does. It's mostly bug free, and tested by NI. It is mature ^^.