Labview & Creating tables

[roboticstudent]

Hello, I am new to this board.

I want to thank you in advance for any help that you are able to provide.  It is appreciated.

I am trying to create tables as seen in formats like MS Access for novice users using LabVIEW.

Does anyone have suggestions?

[mikeporter]

Check out the table and dialog table indicators. Logically they are 2D arrays of strings but they look like what you are wanting.

Mike...

[roboticstudent]

Thanks.

How did you get the table icon? I did not see it in the Functions.

[Will.D]

On the front panel, right click->List & Table->Table

[roboticstudent]

Thanks again.

I am a novice user to LV, but I am creating a program that would allow users to write their data on a table format using Access.

Does anyone have book recommendations or even examples for something in the arena of Access and LV? Also any books or webpages telling the history of NI more in-depth than what is found on the website?

My goal is to have VIs (using MS Access) in order to acquire and enter data.

Can't say thanks enough for any help!

[Will.D]

As far as database communication goes, I think you need the DBTools toolkit from NI. That's what I've always used, and they're quite useful, so long as you've got some decent knowledge of SQL.

Hope this helps

[mikeporter]

Ok;

First a little background is in order.

1. Access is not a database. No snide intention here just a serious point. Access is an development environment for applications that use database management systems--or DBMS. The DBMS that is the default engine for Access is called Jet. This is important because the Jet engine comes installed with Windows. In other words, unless you want to use the application development tools in Access, you don't have to buy or install squat.
2. The Database Toolkit for LV is totally unnecessary for accessing databases. Again, the reason is Windows. All modern Windows OSs come with something built-in called ADO (ActiveX Data Objects). These functions are accessible from LV like any other ActiveX resource. The Database Toolkit is a complicated wrapper around a bunch of very simple functions. Learning to use ADO is very simple and the online documentation on the MS website is excellent.
3. A database is not just a fancy way to save a spreadsheet. DBMS like Jet, SQL Server or Oracle are called "relational" databases. In a relational database the goal is to store common data once and refer to it through key values that serve to define the relationships within the data. The goal is to reduce or eliminate the storage of redundant data.

Now, having made those points, there are several good books on the market that will bring you up to speed on databases. Spend some time online googling things like:

• "SQL" to learn about the language that is used to communicate with databases.
• "Data Modeling" to learn about how to design the tables that will hold your data.
• "Relational Databases" to learn about the theory behind how they work and why they are so powerful.

An excellent beginners book is:

The Practical SQL Handbook, 4^th Edition, J.S. Bowman, S.L. Emerson, M. Darnovsky, Addison-Wesley Developer’s Press, 2001, ISBN: 0-201-70309-2 (The 3^rd edition is still available online through Amazon, and is also very good…)

To implement your application will be challenging, but once you have written an application using a database, you'll never want to write one any other way...

Mike...