How to create Database?

[Sammmy]

Hi all,

I've just purchased a NI USB-6009 DAQ card for my DAQ project.

My DAQ system requires me to create a database to store 2 kinds of signals from motor, namely the motor vibration and current signals.

This database must be abled to perform offline anaylsis, allowing the user to retrive the acquired data in the form of waveform graphs and analyse it based on previous data.

It must also be abled to create reports. I've learnt to generate report and the write to file command but I need help on creating a database.

Thanks.

Sammmy

[Dennis_Knutson]

If you want a database that includes report options, you might want to look at Microsoft Access. As long as your requirements are fairly small, it will probably work just fine. It includes a tutorial on database design. Access is really a front end to the Jet database and can have reports that you design to include graphs and special queries. NI sells the Database Connectivity toolkit that gives you the ability to read and write to any database. There are also free tools available if you're comfortable with the database query language called SQL.

[Sammmy]

HI Dennis,

Thank you replying to my message.

I'm trying to use Access, importing the acquired data from the spreadsheet generated by LabVIEW over to Access. But the problem is, Access is not able to display any kind of waveforms charts from this data. I need this waveforms charts as a mean of comparison.

Is there any way I can used the html report (which shows the waveform graphs) generated by LAbview to form a database in Access?

CAn you shed some light on this?

Thanks.

Sammmy

[Dennis_Knutson]

First of all, a database stores data. It is not a fancy report generator. Access adds some of those reporting tools and there are numerous add ons that will display data in any format you want. I haven't done it personally, but you can add a Microsoft Chart to an Access report and that may be all that you need. Designing reports in Access is probably a topic for a different forum. You can also use Excel to retrieve data from Access and display it there. I've done that and it's not hard to do. You can write a LabVIEW program to retrieve data from any database and display it. This is all assuming that what you have stored in the database is the raw data. If you are generating graphs/charts in LabVIEW and also want to store the image, you can save the graphs as .png or .jpg files and save those to a table.

I don't understand your statement that you are importing data from a spreadsheet to Access. Unless you have a real need for the spreadsheet file, it's just as easy to write directly to the database.

[Sammmy]

Hi,

How do I write a LabVIEW program to retrieve the raw data from the Access database?

Sammmy

[Dennis_Knutson]

You can buy the Database Connectivity Toolkit which has some nice, easy to use, functions for writing to and querying a database. You can donwload LabSQL from http://www.jeffreytravis.com/lost/labsql.html. As does the DCT, this uses ADO (a technology from Microsoft) to communicate with databases. Unlike, the DCT, you basically have to know or learn the database query language called SQL. Using SQL, you would do a SELECT command to retrieve a recordset. Both the DCT and LabSQL work with Access, SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, etc. With Access, you could also use ActiveX to read/write. Of the three options, this is my least favorite. There have been examples of Access ActiveX posted to this forum.