TCP between Labview 6.1 and 8.5

[Jim77215]

Computer 1 is running Labview 6.1 and needs to transmit 'flattened to string' cluster data, using TCP, to Computer 2 which happens to be running Labview 8.5.

On Computer 2 can I unflatten the transmitted 6.1 cluster data into its 8.5 cluster counterpart?

Also, in reversal, would Computer 1 be able to unflatten transmitted 8.5 cluster data back to its 6.1 cluster counterpart?

[Mark_Yedinak]

I am not sure that NI guarantees this functionality. I would be suspect if it was possible. You could create your own variation of the flatten to string to normalize your data. By doing so you would know that your implementation would be backward compatible and work across versions.

[Jim77215]

I'm curious about creating a customized flatten to string. Is there a link somewhere describing how to go about this...

[nathand · Accepted solution]

You shouldn't have any problems passing flattened strings between LabVIEW versions.  I'm not sure why Mark thinks this is suspect; Flatten to String explicitly provides backwards compatibility options (see the help) going back to LabVIEW 4.

[Dennis_Knutson]

I agree. I think the only thing that you need to do is choose Little Endian in the 8.5 code because that is what the 6.1 app will be using.

[Mark_Yedinak]

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nathand wrote:
You shouldn't have any problems passing flattened strings between LabVIEW versions.  I'm not sure why Mark thinks this is suspect; Flatten to String explicitly provides backwards compatibility options (see the help) going back to LabVIEW 4.

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I stand corrected. I know that I have run into issues in the past with transferring data between versions however now that I think about it I think this was binary data. Clusters saved to a file in binary form didn't always transfer between versions. Granted this was several versions back. I now try to save data that will need to be transferred in a generic form to ensure it will be able to be read in different versions of LabVIEW and also provide a means for non-LabVIEW applications to access the data.