File Service and Viewer

[A_Senthilnathan]

Hello;

I understand that file service can be used to host the data files in one place and accessed from any PC via system link app. How is it different from using any other file hosting service or simply having a shared folder in my network and save the data files in the shared folder? 

I can see one advantage is system link client manages the connection to the server (file service), and the developer need not manage the connection in the application. What are the advantages of system link file service over other file hosting services?

Do you have road map to link the data from data files to the dashboard tags in future? so we can view the data from data files directly from dashboard?

Thanks

Senthil

[DJColeslaw]

Hi A_Senthilnathan,

The main difference between the SystemLink File Transfer API and standard file hosting services or shared directories is the level of abstraction. The file transfer API is very simple and, as you noted, the SystemLink client manages the connection so you don't have to worry about low-level communication configuration details. The API also provides some higher-level functionality like notifications to the receiver that files have been received and the ability to easily package additional meta data with the files with simple API calls instead of having to orchestrate all of it from scratch. 

I can't speak to the tags roadmap, but perhaps someone else can weigh in here.

[JoshuaP]

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@A_Senthilnathan

Do you have road map to link the data from data files to the dashboard tags in future? so we can view the data from data files directly from dashboard?

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I don't have a precise time frame for it yet, but we will certainly be adding support for additional data services beyond just tags to dashboards later this year.  In addition, to linking dashboards to files, we also want to make it easy to show system information (hostname, model, serial number, connection status, etc.) in dashboards.

What sort of things would you want to do with files in a dashboard?  Would it be sufficient just to show a filtered list and allow you to download them or would you want to do more?

[A_Senthilnathan]

@JoshuaP

I thought of a on the fly result display for the measurements done in LabVIEW or TestStand. For example, TestStand Sequence can execute the tests and publish results to tags. Here the measurement data is a waveform data, but the tags support only simple data types like numeric, string and boolean. I thought of saving the waveform data or 1D array of data in file and a graph control in dash board can read the 1D array of data and display. 

[JoshuaP]

Binding to arbitrary data stored in files can be a bit tricky.  Would it be sufficient if we supported TDMS files? 

From TS or LabVIEW you could store your measurement data to a TDMS file, which supports waveforms and then publish those files to SystemLink using the Skyline File API.  Then from a dashboard, we can provide some control like a file viewer that you can predefine a filter (only show TDMS files from system X as an example).  When the user selects the file we can provide a simple TDMS data viewer to view and compare the waveforms or they can download it locally if they want to open it up in Excel using the TDMS plugin or something.

[A_Senthilnathan]

JoshuaP, TDMS data viewer control that links to a file is good for now.

[SolitonLearner]

Hi,

How can I edit a file present in the SystemLink server? I tried using Send Last Packet.vi. But it keeps creating new files with the same name. 

Thanks,

Nikitha

[JoshuaP]

Think of the file service as more of a file ingestion service. It is designed to be used for aggregating file to the server where they can be processed or used for reports by the server or other clients. They are immutable, so there is no way to modify a file. You can only process them and create new ones. 

Are you trying to use it for config setting?

[suzaku9]

When you say there is no way to modify a file, does it mean we can't remove it from the server as well? For e.g if I need to upload an updated version of my file, can I remove the earlier file and upload the new one in it's place?

[GreyGrey]

You have the ability to delete a file from the server, which would allow you to upload a new version of that file. This can be done using the "Delete.vi" that's found in the Skyline File Transfer palette. It can also be done from the SystemLink File Viewer.

However, like JoshuaP mentioned, it's more meant to be used to aggregate files like logs for processing elsewhere. How are you looking to use it?