Understanding Dataflow is the second of three units that we strongly recommend for any beginning or relatively inexperienced LabVIEW programmer. These three units can typically reduce the learning curve for creating effective LabVIEW applications by about 6-12 months vs. a typical self-taught LabVIEW programmer.
LabVIEW works in a slightly different way to most other mainstream programming languages. These languages are often based on paradigms such as Procedural, Functional, or Logical paradigms, while LabVIEW is based on the Dataflow paradigm. It is not important for LabVIEW programmers to understand the low-level IT engineering detail behind this distinction, but it is important to understand the practical differences that it makes to the way you think about code.
A proper understanding of Dataflow is absolutely critical for every LabVIEW programmer. If the principles of Dataflow are applied correctly, LabVIEW provides one of the most intuitive and powerful frameworks for parallel computation that is readily accessible to scientific and engineering developers. However, it is also true that a poor understanding of Dataflow is probably the biggest source of buggy and erratically behaved LabVIEW code by a large margin.
In our experience, the Understanding Dataflow unit is the single most important step that any beginning LabVIEW programmer can take to quickly becoming an effective and productive application developer.
After attending this unit, you will be able to:
- Understand the practical distinction between Procedural and Dataflow programming languages
- Understand both the benefits, and the potential pitfalls, of Dataflow programming
- Unlock the power of modern parallel computing architectures
- Create LabVIEW Dataflow code that executes reliably under all conditions
- Recognize and implement the most important techniques for timing and synchronizing tasks
- Recognise and avoid race conditions and other timing and synchronisation errors
- Recognise functions that “break Dataflow”, and know when and how to use them
When, Where and How Much?
Understanding Dataflow is a one day course that is available on-demand, and scheduled to suit your timetable. There is no minimum enrolment – we will run the unit for a single user.
It can be delivered at your premises, or on-line via Zoom or Teams.
The cost is $1,480 ex-GST for the first attendee, and $740 ex-GST (50% discount) for each subsequent attendee from the same organisation. The price includes a copy of the presentation slides, and a DVD with LabVIEW source code for all in-course demonstrations and examples. Lunch is not included. Attendees are required to bring their own laptop or desktop PC with LabVIEW installed – the LabVIEW trial version, downloadable from National Instruments’ website, is acceptable.
Prerequisites
- Working knowledge of Microsoft Windows
- The Basics of Building a LabVIEW Application unit, or equivalent LabVIEW experience
What Next?
There is one additional unit that completes our beginner’s introduction to LabVIEW: LabVIEW Development Top Down.