The LabVIEW Container

[Chris_Cilino]

Hey Ya'll

I've created something new that I'd like to get your feedback on. I'm calling it the LabVIEW Container. Think of it as a cross between an array and a cluster. Another way to think of it is an "in memory cluster" that you can programmatically interact with. Other languages have a "Dictionary" so I wanted to makes a LabVIEW flavor.

Here's a short 5 minute video

Here's the link to the community page where I explain it in detail

I'd love to hear ya'lls thoughts \ feedback. This is still very much a work in progress....

Chris Cilino

National Instruments

[Manzolli]

This will fill a gap that has been bugging me for a long time. I have deal with the pros and con of Arrays and Clusters and choose one. Kudos!

[X.]

This looks interesting...but a bit like trying to get back into a graphical language all the advantages of a text-based programming language. Where's the end? Javascript in LabVIEW?

[Darren]

Chris, is the point of posting this to the LabVIEW Idea Exchange to propose adding your implementation of Containers as a VI-based core LabVIEW feature?

[Chris_Cilino]

It's really two fold:

1. Tying to engage the LV Community in a hanful of strategic contexts to gain exposure

2. Tying to gague if the community on the whole might like to see the Containers added as a LabVIEW feature. Fingers crossed 🙂

[manu.NET]

Hello Chris,

It would be nice if your feature could looks like a dotNet property grid.

Building your container as a XControl would also be nice.

Here is a link to one of my old proposition  PropertyGrid to view/edit LabVIEW dataStructures ...

Manu.

[Mr._Jim]

Chris, it's clear you've put a lot of thought, effort and time into this - Kudos at the very least on that basis, and of course on the clever ideas.

I really, really like the feature set.  Most of these are things that I've been doing frequently myself through variant tricks, etc.

This is just me, personally:

If this hypothetically becomes part of the core LabVIEW environment, it absolutely must be as efficient as possible in resource usage or I will likely not use it.

This looks like it has the potential to be bloated (I'm not at all saying that it will be, necessarily).  If I find NI or third party code that seems or is demonstrably inefficient, I'll sometimes go to the trouble of rewriting or refactoring it myself - it's that important to me.  Often, I'll download a toolkit and the VIs aren't locked, and I'll look at the source code and wince (even occasionally at NI code - sorry, I'm just being honest).

If this gets implemented with efficiency in mind, then I'm all for it and I will probably use it myself.

Thanks again for all your hard work!  I don't mean to denegrate any part of that in what I'm expressing.

[Matthew_Kelton]

I really would strongly consider changing the name.  "Container" means something to programmers outside of LabVIEW.  It's already difficult to explain that a cluster is a container, but not quite a container.  Now to explain that the LabVIEW Container is not a container, use the cluster which is sort of like a container becomes even more confusing.

[Chris_Cilino]

You know, I've really wrestled with the name. I'm not "married" to containers. What would you suggest as an alternative?