DQMH Consortium Toolkits Feature Requests

When adding a new event, I think it would be really nice if the scripting code that adds the new case structure case to the main VI also scans the event description for formatting tags, and then applies them to the new case's subdiagram label. That way the subdiagram label will be formatted exactly the same way as it appears in the VI documentation. For those of us who adhere to the convention of bold facing control names as we mention them when writing VI documentation.

Please create an additional toolbar named "Delacor" that has at least 2 buttons: one to create a new module, one to create a new event.

It's too tedious to go everytime via menu Tools, Delacor, DQMH, bla bla

In this picture you can see on the right the JKI tester toolbar, and also the NI Unit Test Framework toolbar.

thanks

Reviewing somebody's DQMH code I noticed an error generated in the exit case where they had cleanup code (1) was not captured by the Tester. This is purely because the exit case causes the MHL to terminate (2), so the normal error handling strategy (3) doesn't work (enqueuing another job called Error). Can I propose, unless there's a better technique, that adding the "Error Report" broadcast at the end of the Exit case (4) is a simple way to ensure any errors generated here get reported.

Add Error Broadcast in MHL Exit Case

Hi, I would suggest adding a boolean called 'Include Dependencies' to the function on the scripting API to search for DQMH modules on the project, sometimes we have projects and we call DQMH Modules not listed on the project itself, but the developer should be aware we are calling those DQMH modules under dependencies, the Panther Dashboard for DQMH already is searching for DQMH modules under dependencies but it would be great if the native function does this functionality, also, I suggest adding a boolean array output to know if the resulting modules are located under dependencies or they are in the project.

This is how I visualize the connector pane of the 'Get DQMH Modules in Project.vi'

Thank you!.

Running the validator on bigger projects takes quite long.

Would it be possible to speed up the process by running the validation of the modules in parallel?

Additionally: Also in CI/CD we know if the module has changed at all. It would be nice if the cli-module-validation could be called with a .lvlib instead of a .lvproj. Therefore, it could be handy to have a VI which lists all dqmh modules in a .lvproj.

I would like a right-click plugin where I could right-click a DQMH broadcast subVI and "Find Event Frames". This would search all VIs in my current project for event structures that are registered for the broadcast event fired by the subVI I clicked on, and show me a list of results that I could double-click and be shown the event frames one at a time. Or I guess it could just open all the diagrams for me, since I probably want to walk through all of them anyway.

The operation could take a while, but would be worth it. I often find myself wondering where all the places are in my code that are registered for a particular broadcast.

(idea originally posted here)

Lately I've been running into lots of code that looks like this:

I just need to start a module, call a request (and wait for reply, usually), then stop the module. I think it would be convenient if the module templates included a 'Start and Sync Module' VI that wrapped the Start Module.vi and Synchronize Module Events.vi. This is for the use case where you won't be needing to register for any of the module's broadcasts.

There is an option to convert Requests to Request and wait for reply but requests can not be converted to Roundtrip, so a broadcast has to be created manually with payload identical to the Request. Creating a Broadcast is not much of a deal but having two identical payloads is not ideal especially if the payload bundles multiple typedefs.

The below image comes from the Error Reported broadcast event case in the API Tester (as found in the default Singleton or Cloneable DQMH module templates):

This produces strings that look like this:

This could be improved by adding the "message" component of the error, by using the Simple Error Handler.vi.  Using the message makes the error report more descriptive, and doesn't rely on the user having to use "Explain Error" to review what the error code's could possibly be related to.

This produces strings that look like this:

Observe that the error message is now present in the text.

When creating a Request and Reply event, the scripter creates the corresponding calling code.
In this code the request VI is added on the diagram with all inputs empty (except for the error IOs).

Most of the time I select the VI and perform a 'CTRL+space + CTRL+D' to create all input/output controls and indicators.

And, therefore, it creates a boolean control for the 'Wait for Reply ?' input.

99.9% percent of the time I replace that control with a constant value, since I know if I need to wait for a reply or not for that specific request. And there is (close to) no chance that I'll need to set that using a control on my tester GUI.

Maybe placing the request VI and adding a constant linked to the 'Wait for reply ?' input on the tester diagram would help reducing the number of redundant actions one achieves when coding the tester ?

Connecting the constant would avoid having to change a control created by the 'CTRL+space + CTRL+D' shortcut into a constant each time.

When I create a new Broadcast, here's what the new frame in the API Tester looks like:

I almost always end up adding the following code by hand (usually by copying it from another frame):

It seems to me that most of this code could be scripted. Maybe everything except the value of the first format string?

(idea originally posted here)

We are constantly having deployment errors on RT targets, mentioning the Simple Error Handler. Since on RT Targets that function is useless anyway, we've put a conditional disable structure around. This solved the error.

It would be nice, if that CDS would be added to a standard DQMH module.

When creating new module, I'd like a way to add a text explaining its responsibility. It will reinforce good conception practices and allow Antidoc to retrieve information to generate a valuable documentation.

Note: IMO, this content should be added to the module lvlib description.

If this field could optionally mandatory to create the module, I would find this great 🙂

I feel like a DQMH module isn't "valid" if its Main VI or its Tester are broken. Right now a module with either of these VIs being broken can pass all validation tests. If something goes wrong after I've run some module "fixers" (or perhaps an external factor has caused my module to become broken without my knowledge), the DQMH Validate Module tool seems like a good place to let me know about it.

If you want to pass a parameter to your module when it starts, you can add that parameter as an input to Start Module VI:

The way you define the type of the Call By Reference node (to accept the new parameter) is usually by dragging the Main VI into the VI Reference constant wired to Open VI Reference. However, sometimes a different VI may be used to define the type, especially if there are multiple DQMH Modules in your project that take the same inputs on initialization. Also, the opposite situation can occur where you add an input to the Main VI connector pane, but forget to add that input to the Start Module VI.

If the connector pane of the Main VI doesn't match the VI Reference constant in the Start Module VI, you will receive an error when attempting to start the module. I propose that we add a Validate Module test that detects this situation (connector panes of Main VI and VI Reference constant don't match) and returns a validation failure.

As DQMH module templates become more widely used, it would be very nice if, when adding a new DQMH module that was added as a custom template, the overlay pre-populated with the overlay that the template uses.

So maybe thinking about this on a lower level, this feature request comes in two parts. When saving a DQMH module as a template, store the metadata that makes up the current overlay in a config file somewhere. Then, on the Add New DQMH Module window, whenever a custom Module Type is selected, pre-populate the overlay with that metadata.

When opening a DQMH module .lvlib file directly, the LabVIEW IDE allows to call the DQMH Scripting Tools from the Tools menu, which results in an error message when trying to parse the project for modules:

This error should be handled the same way as when calling the DQMH Scripting Tools from a single VI (or even the getting started window):

Original idea from @FabiolaDelaCueva 

Sometimes you could need to unregister broadcast events. To do this you want to use the Broadcast Events--cluster.ctl, but it's set to private scope (it's totally fine).

Having a public wrapper to this control just giving access to the type and not the current event like you can get with Obtain Broadcast Events For Registration function would be great.

Considering providing a fixer to add this wrapper to all other existing modules.

Prior to DQMH 5, I would sometimes see developers add a VI reference output from Start Module.vi to the cloneable Main VI instance that was running:

This was sometimes convenient for the calling code, like in cases where you needed to insert the cloneable main VI instance into a subpanel or something like that. Unfortunately, you cannot use the same approach with Start Asynchronous Call in DQMH 5.0 and later. The VI Reference output from Start Asynchronous Call cannot be used for similar purposes. So you can't output the VI reference that was used to start the async call and expect your code to work the same. Instead, you'll likely want to create a request to the module that will use the "This VI" constant within the main VI instance itself to perform whatever operation needs to be done on the main VI instance. 

I propose there be a new DQMH Validate Module test that detects cases where the VI Reference output of the Start Asynchronous Call function is wired: