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Graphical program execution with distributed block diagram display

1. Software acceleration using programmable hard ware devices IEEE Proceedings Computers and Digital Tech niques vol 143 No 1 Jan 1996 pp 55 63 Leeser et al High Level Synthesis and Generating FPGAs with the BEDROC System Journal of VLSI Signal Processing vol 6 No 2 Aug 1993 pp 191 214 Zagar et al CORBA based Remote Instrumentation 9th Medi terranean Electrotechnical Conference MELECON May 1998 pp 1294 1298 vol 2 Tel Aviv Johnston et al High Speed Distributed Data Handling for On Line Instrumentation Systems ACM IEEE 1997 Supercomputing Con ference Aug 16 1997 pp 1 19 Beguelin et al Visualization and Debugging in a Heterogenous Environment IEEE Jun 1993 pp 88 95 vol 26 Issue 6 Jamal et al The Applicability of the Visual Programming Lan guage LabVIEW to Large Real World Applications IEEE 1995 pp 99 106 Wiberg Per Arne Graphical Programming of Time Deterministic Real Time Systems IEEE 1996 pp 173 180 Ade et al Hardware Software Codesign with GRAPE Proceed ings of the 6th IEEE International Workshop on Rapid System Prototyping Jun 9 1995 pp 40 47 Lauwereins et al Grape II A System Level Prototyping Enrivon ment for DSP Applications IEEE vol 28 Issue 2 Feb 1995 pp 35 43 Wenban et al A Software Development System for FPGA Based Data Acquisition Systems FPGAs for Custom Computing Machine
2. The problems outlined above may in large part be solved by providing a system and method enabling distributed display of the user interface of a graphical program executing on a server computer In one embodiment the system includes a server computer where a graphical program executes and one or more client computers connected to the server computer which receive and display a user interface e g one or more user interface panels corresponding to the graphical pro gram In one embodiment the user interface can be used from the client computer s to provide input to or display output from the graphical program during program execution In one specific embodiment the invention may comprise a distrib uted virtual instrumentation system wherein a graphical pro gram executes on a server computer to perform a measure ment or automation function and one or more front panels are displayed on client computers thus enabling one or more users to remotely view and or control the measurement or automation function In one embodiment a user of a client computer specifies a remote server computer on which a graphical program executes The remote server information may be specified in various ways For example the information may be specified as a uniform resource locator URL as an internet protocol IP address as a machine name and TCP IP port number etc In one embodiment a user may specify the remote computer by entering a URL into an ap
3. Thus steps 460 and 462 may be performed in an iterative manner Data Socket In an alternative embodiment the DataSocket system and method disclosed in U S patent application Ser No 09 185 161 may be used to facilitate the communication between the user s client software and the remote computer running the graphical program The DataSocket system comprises a cli ent software component that addresses data sources targets using a URL much the way that a URL is used to address web pages anywhere in the world When reading from an input US 8 074 203 B2 15 source the DataSocket performs all work necessary to read the raw data from various input sources and to parse the data and return it in a form directly usable by the user s applica tions For example with respect to one embodiment of the present invention the DataSocket may be used to receive a description of the remote graphical program s user interface panel and broker this description to for example a web browser plug in operable to display the user interface panel in a web browser window Once the user interface panel is displayed the DataSocket may then receive data updates from the remote graphical program which are displayed in the user interface panel When writing to an output target the Data Socket performs all work necessary to format the data provided by the user into the appropriate raw format for the specific target For example with respect to one embo
4. Xanalog Corporation Jan 1987 8 pages Available XA 1000 Literature and Its Use Xanalog Corporation 1986 2 pages Xanalog XA 1000 Programming ICONS Xanalog Corporation 1986 15 pages Xanalog s CAE System The Fastest AT Alive Mass High Tech vol 4 22 Aug 1988 1 page Xanalog The Computer Aided Engineering Workstation Comes to Simulation Simulation vol 47 No 1 Jul 1986 3 pages Xanalog RT Real Time Analog and Digital I O Xanalog Corpora tion 1990 4 pages Xanalog SC Xanalog Corporation Sep 1990 4 pages Xanalog Specializing in Workstations for Continuous Dynamic Simulation Xanalog Corporation 1987 24 pages Xanalog Real Time User Guide Xanalog Corporation 1994 28 pages Lee et al Gabriel A Design Environment for Programmable DSPs Nov 7 1988 13 pages Lee et al A Design Tool for Hardware and Software for Multipro cessor DSP Systems May 1989 4 pages Gabriel 0 7 Overview The University of California 1990 5 pages Buck et al Scheduling Dynamic Dataflow Graphs with Bounded Memory Using the Token Flow Model Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers http www synopsys com 1993 4 pages Lee Design Methodology for DSP Department of Electrical Engi neering and Computer Sciences University of California at Berkeley 1992 4 pages Pino et al Interface Synthesis in Heterogeneous Syste
5. face type and in fact many systems may only have one or more instruments of a single interface type such as only GPIB instruments The instruments are coupled to the unit under test WUT or process 150 or are coupled to receive field signals typi cally generated by transducers The system 100 may be used in a data acquisition and control application in a test and measurement application a process control application or a man machine interface application FIG 2B illustrates an exemplary industrial automation system 160 The industrial automation system 160 is similar to the instrumentation or test and measurement system 100 shown in FIG 2A Elements which are similar or identical to elements in FIG 2A have the same reference numerals for convenience The system 160 comprises a computer 86 which connects to one or more devices or instruments The computer 86 comprises a CPU a display screen memory and one or more input devices such as a mouse or keyboard as shown The computer 86 connects through the one or more devices to a process or device 150 to perform an automation function US 8 074 203 B2 9 such as MMI Man Machine Interface SCADA Supervi sory Control and Data Acquisition portable or distributed data acquisition process control advanced analysis or other control The one or more devices may include a data acquisition board 114 and associated signal conditioning circuitry 124 a PXI instrument 118 a video
6. Although only one client is shown connected to computer system 86 as described above multiple clients may connect to computer 86 in order to view the graphical program s user interface panel and or interact with the graphical program Computer system 86 preferably includes a mechanism for coordinating control of the graphical program among mul tiple remote users For example computer system 86 may distribute control of the graphical program among the users using various methods or algorithms such as a round robin scheme prioritized round robin scheme etc Various types of privileges or permissions may be assigned to different users granting them different levels of control over the graphical program For example the program creator may be autho rized to assume complete control over the program locking out other users Other users may only be authorized to view the graphical program s user interface panel but not to use it to control the graphical program e g these users may not be allowed to provide input to the graphical program FIGS 2 and 2B Instrumentation and Industrial Automa tion Systems FIGS 2A and 2B illustrate exemplary systems that may store or use programs according to the present invention These exemplary systems illustrate systems specialized for instrumentation process control or other purposes FIGS 2A and 2B illustrate exemplary server computer systems Thus the server computer 86 described above may b
7. For example the user interface panel s may be stored on the remote computer in a binary form but may be translated into a text form e g a markup language descrip tion which the client computer is operable to process in order to display the panel s appropriately Such an embodiment may advantageously enable client computers with different types of display devices e g small screens included in vari ous types of wireless devices to easily interpret and display the user interface panel description s differently depending on the capabilities of the particular display devices In step 460 the user s client software may receive data updates from the remote computer and update the user inter face panel display accordingly For example as described above the graphical program may be associated with mea suring data from a live data source and may be operable to display live data on the user interface panel continuously or periodically Any of various data protocols may be used in transferring and displaying data updates The above description of step 460 pertains to an embodi ment in which the user interface panel displayed on the client computer is separated from the actual data displayed in the panel That is the client computer may receive data to be displayed in the user interface panel independently of the panel description itself and may update the display of the pancl according to the data to reflect the output ofthe remote
8. whose inventors were Robert Dye Darshan Shah Steve Rogers Greg Richardson and Dean Luick which claims benefit of priority of U S patent application Ser No 09 617 600 titled Graphical Pro gramming System with Distributed Block Diagram Execu tion and User Interface Display filed Jun 13 2000 whose inventors were Robert Dye Darshan Shah Steve Rogers Greg Richardson and Dean Luick which claims benefit of priority of U S provisional application Ser No 60 149 950 titled Graphical Programming System with Distributed Block Diagram Execution and Front Panel Display filed Aug 19 1999 whose inventors were Robert Dye Darshan Shah Steve Rogers and Greg Richardson FIELD OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to the field of graphical pro gramming and virtual instrumentation In particular the invention relates to a system and method wherein a graphical program block diagram executes on a server computer and one or more client computers receive and display a graphical program user interface panel corresponding to the block dia gram wherein the graphical program user interface panel can be used to provide input to or display output to from the block diagram The present invention further relates to a distributed virtual instrumentation system wherein a block diagram executes on a server computer and one or more front panels are displayed on client computers DESCRIPTION OF THE RELATED ART Traditionall
9. 1994 WO 94 15311 7 1994 WO 96 14618 5 1996 OTHER PUBLICATIONS Bier et al Gabriel A Design Environment for DSP IEEE Micro Issue vol 10 No 5 1990 pp 28 45 Ludolph et al The Fabrik Programming Environment IEEE pp 222 230 1988 Stallings William Operating Systems Multiprocessor and Real Time Scheduling 1995 pp 394 414 2nd Ed Prentice Hall Douglas Bruce D Ph D Custom Embedded Communication Pro tocols Conference Proceedings of Embedded Systems Conference East Mar 10 12 1997 Boston Massachusetts pp 637 657 Labrosse Jean Inside Real Time Kernels Conference Proceed ings of Embedded Systems Conference East Mar 10 12 1997 Bos ton Massachusetts pp 205 214 Labrosse Jean Designing with Real Time Kernels Conference Proceedings of Embedded Systems Conference East Mar 10 12 1997 Boston Massachusetts pp 379 389 Theimer et al Preemptable Remote Execution Facilities for the V System ACM 1985 pp 2 12 Shearman Sam Hardware in the loop connectivity extends con tinuous system simulation Personal Engineering Jun 1997 pp 28 37 Chen et al Software Environment for WASMII A Data Driven Machine with a Virtual Hardware Field Programmable Logic Architectures Synthesis and Applications 4th International Work shop on Field Programmable Logic and Applications FPL 94 Pro ceedings Berlin Germany 1994 12 pages Edwards et al
10. computer where the graphical program includes a plurality of interconnected function icons repre Related V S Application Data senting graphical data flow of a function Information indi 63 Continuation of application 10 772 518 filed atinga plurality of graphical programs on the first computer Feb 5 2004 e g list may be displayed on the second computer and user input specifying the graphical program on the first computer received to the second computer e g selecting the graphical 51 Int Cl program from the list of graphical programs The graphical 9 44 2006 01 program is executed on the first computer and information 15 16 2006 01 describing the user interface of the graphical program is pro 3 00 2006 01 vided to the second computer during execution The user interface of the graphical program is displayed on the second 52 US Cl 717113 a 5 computer facilitating interaction between a user of the sec ond computer and the graphical program executing on the 58 Field of Classification Search 717 104 113 first computer 709 201 203 715 733 740 See application file for complete search history 20 Claims 12 Drawing Sheets user specifies a remote computer running a graphical program 450 user s client software receives data updates from the remote computer and updates the user interface panel s on the users di
11. computer using a communication protocol based on the stan dard TCP IP protocol When the user specifies the remote computer for a connection the agent on the remote computer transfers a description of the graphical program s user inter face panel to the user s client software This description may be sent in the same format used to store the user interface panel information on the remote computer The user interface panel description may of course be sent in various other formats e g as an XML description The user s client side software e g web browser plug in is preferably enabled to interpret any type of user interface panel description that it may receive from the remote computer and is enabled to appropriately display the user interface panel to the user Once the graphical program s user interface panel is received and displayed on the user s display screen the user interface panel may be dynamically updated during execution of the graphical program block diagram For example the user interface panel may include a graph which displays various types of measurement data produced by the block diagram such as an electrical signal meteorological data etc and this graph may scroll on the user s display as the measured data values change in response to graphical pro gram execution As another example the user interface panel may comprise numerical text indicators that are updated with new values periodically etc The
12. diagram ofthe graphical program is usable by a user of the client computer to analyze the graphical program executing on the server computer in real time 11 A method for displaying a remotely executing block diagram of a graphical program on a client computer the method comprising receiving user input to the client computer wherein the user input indicates the graphical program on a server computer and wherein the graphical program includes a block diagram that comprises a plurality of intercon nected function icons representing graphical data flow of a desired function that visually indicate functionality of the graphical program providing the indication of the graphical program to the server computer over a network executing the graphical program on the server computer wherein said executing the graphical program comprises executing the plurality of interconnected function icons of the block diagram of the graphical program receiving information describing data updates of the block diagram of the graphical program from the server com puter over the network during said executing and updating a display of the block diagram of the graphical program on the client computer during said executing to reflect the graphical program executing on the server computer using the information describing the data updates of the block diagram of the graphical program by the client computer wherein the updated display of the block diagram of the grap
13. graphical program In an alternative embodiment the pro gram output may be coupled with the panel description For example the panel description may be received as an image which reflects the program output Thus when receiving data updates the client computer may receive an updated descrip tion ofthe user interface panel and may redisplay the updated panel In step 462 the user may operate the user interface panel e g by performing a GUI style point and click operation The user s client software brokers this GUI operation to the remote computer 86 For example as described above the user s client software may communicate with a server side agent which may then forward the command to the remote graphical program The remote graphical program then responds to the command accordingly In many cases the user s command in step 462 would cause the graphical pro gram to change its output display which would then be reflected on the user s display screen In other words in response to the user manipulating the inputs on the user interface displayed onthe client computer 82 the user input is provided to the graphical program executing on the server computer 86 which may affect the displayed output of the graphical program This displayed output is provided from the server computer 86 to be displayed on the user interface displayed on the client computer 82 The user may then pro vide other input to the graphical user interface and so on
14. programming environment may allow a program to be run from within the development environment or the developer may create a standalone program and run the program etc It is noted that steps 420 through 426 typically occur in an iterative manner and typically occur in various orders For example a developer may add a user interface control to a user interface panel then connect a user interface node corre sponding to the control to another node then add and connect a function node to the program then run the program to test it then change the way a node is connected etc Also as noted above step 420 may be automatically e g programmati cally performed in response to step 422 In addition the user interface panel may be automatically created at edit time or may be automatically generated at run time Thus the flow chart of FIG 4 is exemplary and various steps may be com bined omitted added or modified as required or desired for developing different graphical programs or using different embodiments of graphical program development environ ments FIG 7 Accessing a Remote Graphical Program FIG 7 is a flowchart diagram illustrating one embodiment ofa user accessing a remote graphical program In alternative embodiments various steps of FIG 7 may be combined altered omitted or may occur in different orders As shown in step 450 of FIG 7 a user specifies a remote computer In step 452 the user specifies a graphica
15. stores computer programs accord ing to the present invention The main memory 166 also stores operating system software as well as the software for opera tion ofthe computer system as well known to those skilled in the art The computer programs of the present invention will be discussed in more detail below host bus 162 15 coupled to an expansion or input output bus 170 by means ofa bus controller 168 or bus bridge logic The expansion bus 170 is preferably the PCI Peripheral Component Interconnect expansion bus although other bus types can be used The expansion bus 170 includes slots for various devices such as the data acquisition board 114 of FIG 2A a GPIB interface card 122 which provides a GPIB bus interface to the GPIB instrument 112 of FIG 2A and a VXI or MXI bus card 186 coupled to the VXI chassis 116 for receiving VXI instruments The computer 86 further com prises a video display subsystem 180 and hard drive 182 coupled to the expansion bus 170 FIGS 4 6 Interactive Creation of a Graphical Program by a User FIG 4 is a flowchart diagram illustrating one embodiment of how a user may interactively or manually create or edit a graphical program As shown in the flowchart and described below the user interactively adds various objects to a graphi US 8 074 203 B2 11 cal program connects them together etc It is noted that the various steps of FIG 4 may be performed in various orders or omitted as desi
16. the user may interactively perform operations such as program debugging while the graphical program executes on the remote computer The client soft ware may communicate with the remote computer in order to specify debugging information such as break points and to control program execution such as continuing execution from break points etc The client software may be operable to illustrate the operation of the remote graphical program in various ways e g by using execution highlighting to update the block diagram appearance to show real time execution or data flow etc FIGS 8 10 Exemplary Graphical Programs FIGS 8 10 illustrate several exemplary graphical pro grams to which the present system and method may be applied Each figure illustrates a block diagram for the pro gram and an associated user interface panel As described above the graphical program may execute on one computer while one or more end users remotely view or interact with the user interface panel of the graphical program from a different computer Also an end user may remotely view and or edit the block diagram of the graphical program Each graphical program example is briefly described below The block diagram shown in FIG 8B simulates a tank control application The associated user interface panel of 35 40 45 55 60 65 16 FIG 8A displays a history of inflow level and temperature for the tank control application The block diagram sh
17. user may also interact with the user interface panel on the client computer to provide input to the block diagram executing on the server computer e g by issuing standard point and click type GUI commands The user s input is passed to the remote graphical program on the server com puter and the graphical program responds accordingly In other words the user may interact with the remote graphical program exactly as he would interact with the program if it were running locally on the user s computer A means for coordinating control among users may be included so that multiple users interacting with the same graphical program do not interfere with each others actions As described below in one embodiment a user may also request and receive the remote graphical program s block diagram e g to edit or debug the graphical program As noted above in the preferred embodiment a TCP IP based communication protocol is used for communication between the user s client software and the remote server computer executing the graphical program In an alternative embodiment the DataSocket system and method disclosed in U S patent application Ser No 09 185 161 may be used to facilitate the communication between the user s client soft ware and the remote computer running the graphical pro gram The DataSocket system comprises a client software component that addresses data sources targets using a URL much the way that a URL is used t
18. 4 due 0729 4 m n aey ssoB US 8 074 203 B2 Sheet 9 of 12 Dec 6 2011 U S Patent ol 31 amog peusnd si uo nq jun Xue y ungui raa asm U S Patent Dec 6 2011 Sheet 10 of 12 US 8 074 203 B2 ce LO 1 e zi FIG e 1000 Frequency Response 31 00 500 oO 07 Low Frequency 200 100 00 40 60 8 Se 4 0 US 8 074 203 B2 Sheet 11 of 12 Dec 6 2011 U S Patent 86 914 Aouanbasy U S Patent System Controls Acquisition Dec 6 2011 B on Update Period 10 01 sec off Analpsis 00 2 00 emperature Range Low Limit High Limit Histogram Parameters Minimum bin E 70 00 Maximum bin Sheet 12 of 12 30 0 0 00 des F 850 80 0 75 0 Standard Deviation 0 00 2 00 1 50 1 00 0 50 0 00 0 0 US 8 074 203 B2 Temperature History 650 700 750 80 0 850 90 0 950 FIG 10B US 8 074 203 B2 1 GRAPHICAL PROGRAM EXECUTION WITH DISTRIBUTED BLOCK DIAGRAM DISPLAY CONTINUATION AND PRIORITY DATA This application is a continuation of U S patent applica tion Ser No 10 772 518 titled Graphical Programming Sys tem with Block Diagram Execution and Distributed User Interface Display filed Feb 5 2004
19. 7 21 1995 15 pages Bhattacharyya et al The Almagest Ptolemy 0 7 User s Manual vol 1 1997 532 pages j Logix Product Overview iLogix 1996 44 pages Press Release i Logix Statemate MAGNUM Supports PCs iLogix Jan 31 1997 2 pages Press Release i Logix Signs Reseller Agreement for Virtual Proto types Inc s VAPS Product Line Feb 11 1997 2 pages Press Release i Logix Introduces Rhapsody Object Oriented Analysis Design and Implementation Tool Feb 10 1997 2 pages Statement C Product Overview iLogix 1995 4 pages Press Release i Logix and Integrated Systems Link Statemate MAGNUM and MATRIX AutoCode Jan 3 1997 2 pages Press Release i Logix and Wind River unveil Industry s First Rapid Prototyping Solution for Testing Embedded Systems at ESC West in San Jose Sep 17 1996 3 pages Press Release i Logix Inc Endorses Unified Modeling Language Jan 16 1997 1 page Lapsley Philip Dean Host Interface and Debugging of Dataflow DSP Systems Master s Thesis 1991 pp 1 55 LabVIEW User Manual for Windows Sep 1994 pp 4 1 4 21 National Instruments Corporation Austin TX US 8 074 203 B2 Sheet 1 of 12 Dec 6 2011 U S Patent 98 5 5 sajndwoy 918 v8 jeujeju NVM NV 1 c8 ulejs s U S Patent Dec 6 2011 Sheet 2 of 12 US 8 074 203 B2 Motion Control v 100 5 e 136 image Acquisiti
20. FIG 7 Other embodiments of steps 450 452 are also contem plated For example the user may still work within the con text of a web browser environment but may not interact with a web server at any point For example the user may provide a URL to the web browser wherein the URL comprises a protocol scheme which is not natively supported by the web browser In response the web browser may delegate the URL to a protocol handler plug in For example such a protocol handler plug in may be constructed according to the Microsoft Asynchronous Pluggable Protocols specification The plug in may then directly contact the remote computer comprising the resource e g graphical program that the URL references and may continue with steps of FIG 7 In step 454 the user s client software e g web browser plug in connects to the remote computer The remote com puter may have an application or agent operable to support the server side operations corresponding to the client side opera tions illustrated in FIG 7 Any of various application level protocols may be used to communicate between the client software and the server software In the preferred embodi ment a communication protocol based on the TCP IP proto col is used for communication with the remote computer At the time of connection the remote graphical program may already be running on the remote computer or the remote computer may be operable to launch the program in response to the c
21. Operate Project Windows Help 13ptApplcationFont z he result of 2 0 3 0 was FIG 6 U S Patent Dec 6 2011 user specifies a remote computer running a graphical program 450 user specifies a graphical program running on the remote computer 452 user s client software connects to the remote computer 454 user s client software requests the user interface panel description s of the user interface panel s associated with the graphical program 456 user s client software receives the user interface panel description s from the remote computer and displays the user interface panel s on the user s display screen 458 Sheet 7 of 12 US 8 074 203 B2 user s client software receives data updates from the remote computer and updates the user interface panel s on the user s display screen 460 user operates user interface panel s to control the graphical program 462 FIG 7 US 8 074 203 B2 Sheet 8 of 12 Dec 6 2011 U S Patent V8 914 j a1nje1aduia 01S1H ROY 3 wur dua 00 96 00 SOL OE D sur je e7 07 0 NNF aum ywi 4 qur oo sot a 40 E chia 0002 4 dua 8497 LT uj aw 3 y 2 2 usn aey og SLE a949
22. S patent application Ser No 09 185 161 titled Data Socket System and Method for Accessing Data Sources Using URLs filed Nov 3 1998 whose inventor was Paul F Austin U S patent application Ser No 09 374 740 titled System and Method for Automatically Creating URLs for Accessing Data Sources and Data Targets filed Aug 13 1999 whose inventors were Paul Austin David Fuller Kurt M Carlson Chris Mayer Stephen Rogers Joe Savage and Brian Sierer U S patent application Ser No 09 546 047 titled System and Method for Connecting to and Viewing Live Data using a Standard User Agent filed Apr 10 2000 whose inventor was Paul Austin U S provisional application Ser No 60 149 950 titled Graphical Programming System with Distributed Block Diagram Execution and Front Panel Display filed Aug 19 1999 whose inventors were Robert Dye Darshan Shah Steve Rogers and Greg Richardson US 8 074 203 B2 7 U S patent application Ser No 09 617 600 titled Graphi cal Programming System with Distributed Block Diagram Execution and User Interface Display filed Jun 13 2000 whose inventors were Robert Dye Darshan Shah Steve Rog ers Greg Richardson and Dean A Luick U S patent application Ser No 10 772 518 titled Graphi cal Programming System with Block Diagram Execution and Distributed User Interface Display filed Feb 5 2004 whose inventors were Robert Dye Darshan Shah Steve Rogers G
23. aim 1 wherein the graphical program comprises one or more of a graphical data flow program a graphical control flow program or a graphical execution flow program 10 A method for executing a graphical program on a server computer and providing a block diagram of the graphical program on a client computer the method comprising receiving a user provided specification of the graphical program on the server computer from the client com puter over a network wherein the graphical program includes a block diagram that comprises a plurality of interconnected function icons representing graphical data flow of a desired function that visually indicate functionality of the graphical program 5 20 40 45 55 65 18 executing the graphical program on the server computer wherein said executing the graphical program comprises executing the plurality of interconnected function icons of the block diagram of the graphical program and providing information describing data updates of the block diagram ofthe graphical program to the client computer over the network during said executing wherein the information describing the data updates of the block diagram ofthe graphical program is useable by the client computer to update a display ofthe block diagram ofthe graphical program on the client computer during said executing to reflect the graphical program executing on the server computer and wherein the updated display of the block
24. az United States Patent US008074203B2 10 Patent No US 8 074 203 B2 Dye et al 45 Date of Patent 6 2011 54 GRAPHICAL PROGRAM EXECUTION WITH 56 References Cited DISTRIBUTED BLOCK DIAGRAM DISPLAY U S PATENT DOCUMENTS 75 Inventors Robert E Dye Austin TX US a id Darshan Shah Round Rock TX US 4 901 221 A 2 1990 Kodosky et al Steve Rogers Austin TX 05 Greg 5 109 504 A 4 1992 Littleton Richardson Round Rock TX US Continued Dean A Luick Austin TX US FOREIGN PATENT DOCUMENTS 73 Assignee National Instruments Corporation EP 0367709 5 1990 Austin TX US Continued Notice Subject to any disclaimer the term of this OTHER PUBLICATIONS patent is extended or adjusted under 35 Lee et al Gabriel A Design Environment for DSP IEEE Trans U S C 154 b by 742 days actions on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing vol 37 No 11 Nov 1989 1751 1762 This patent is subject to a terminal dis claimer Continued Primary Examiner Wei Zhen 21 Appl No 12 143 198 Assistant Examiner Qing Chen 74 Attorney Agent or Firm Meyertons Hood Kivlin 22 Filed Jun 20 2008 Kowert amp Goetzel P C Jeffrey C Hood 57 ABSTRACT 65 Prior Publication Data 6n System and method for executing a graphical program on a US 2009 0024981 A1 22 2009 first computer and providing a user interface of the graphical program on a second
25. cal Pro gramming for Enhanced Detection and Monitoring of Partial Dis charges Proc Electrical Insulation Conf 1997 pp 291 296 Sep 1997 Choosing Block Diagram Tools for DSP Design Berkeley Design Technology http www bdti com articles info__ dspmt95Sblockdiagram htm May 9 2003 pp 1 7 Real Time Workshop for Use with SIMULINK User s Guide The MathWorks Inc May 1994 229 pages Guide to Rapid Prototyping with Simulink Real Time Workshop and dSPACE The MathWorks 1995 16 pages Real Time Interface to Simulink RTI 30 User s Guide dSPACE 1995 125 pages Gorman et al Real Time Data Acquisition and Controls Using MatLAB Proceedings of the Computers in Engineering Conference and the Engineering Database Symposium ASME 1995 4 pages SPW MatLAB Co Simulation Interface Product Data Sheet Alta Group 1996 2 pages Signal Processing WorkSystem MATLAB Interface User s Guide Alta Group Oct 1995 72 pages Alta Group of Cadence Design Systems Inc Berkeley Design Technology Inc 1995 34 pages Code Generation System CGS Product Data Sheet Alta Group 1994 8 pages SPW CGS Porting Kits Product Data Sheet Alta Group 1994 2 pages US 8 074 203 2 Page 3 MultiProx for SPW Product Data Sheet Alta Group 1994 4 pages DSP ProCoder for SPW Product Data Sheet Alta Group 1994 4 pages Xanalog Corporation Sales Manual
26. d within the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims We claim 1 A non transitory computer accessible memory medium that stores program instructions executable on a server com puter to perform receiving user provided information indicating a graphical program from a client computer wherein the graphical program includes a block diagram that comprises a plu rality of interconnected function icons representing graphical data flow of a desired function that visually indicate functionality of the graphical program and wherein the user provided information is received by the server computer over a network executing the graphical program wherein said executing the graphical program comprises executing the plurality of interconnected function icons ofthe block diagram of the graphical program and providing information describing data updates of the block diagram ofthe graphical program to the client computer over the network during said executing wherein the information describing the data updates of the block diagram ofthe graphical program is useable by the client computer to update a display ofthe block diagram ofthe graphical program on the client computer during said executing to reflect the graphical program executing on the server computer and wherein the updated display of the block diagram ofthe graphical program is usable by a user of the client computer to analyze the graphical program executing
27. device 132 and associated image acquisition card 134 a motion control device 136 and asso ciated motion control interface card 138 a fieldbus device 170 and associated fieldbus interface card 172 a PLC Pro grammable Logic Controller 176 a serial instrument 182 and associated serial interface card 184 or a distributed data acquisition system such as the Fieldpoint system available from National Instruments among other types of devices The DAQ card 114 the PXI chassis 118 the video device 132 and the image acquisition card 136 are preferably con nected to the computer 86 as described above The serial instrument 182 is coupled to the computer 86 through a serial interface card 184 or through a serial port such as RS 232 port provided by the computer 86 The PLC 176 couples to the computer 86 through a serial port Ethernet port or a proprietary interface The fieldbus interface card 172 is pref erably comprised in the computer 86 and interfaces through a fieldbus network to one or more fieldbus devices Each of the DAQ card 114 the serial card 184 the fieldbus card 172 the image acquisition card 134 and the motion control card 138 are typically plugged in to an slot in the computer 86 as described above However these cards 114 184 172 134 and 138 are shown external to computer 86 for illustrative purposes In typical industrial automation systems a device will not be present of each interface type and in fact ma
28. diment of the present invention the DataSocket may marshal the user s input com mands into an appropriate format and send them to the remote graphical program For more information on the DataSocket system and method please refer to the above referenced patent application Receiving the Block Diagram of the Remote Graphical Pro gram In one embodiment a user may also request and receive the remote graphical program s block diagram The block dia gram may be displayed as a simple non interactive image that may be useful for example for the user to understand how the graphical program is implemented For example the remote graphical program may execute within a graphical programming environment that provides an ability to pro grammatically edit the graphical program Thus the user may use the information gained from the display of the block diagram to remotely edit the graphical program For more information on dynamically creating or editing a graphical program please refer to the above referenced patent applica tion Ser No 09 518 492 titled System and Method for Programmatically Creating a Graphical Program In another embodiment the client computer may receive and view the actual block diagram thereby enabling the user to view and edit the block diagram using software on the client computer The user of the client computer may then transfer the edited block diagram back to the server computer In another embodiment
29. e comprised in an instrumentation or industrial automation system wherein the present invention allows for distributed control ofa test or automation application The present invention may of course be used in other types of applications as desired 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 8 FIG 2A illustrates an instrumentation control system 100 The system 100 comprises a host computer 86 server com puter 86 which connects to one or more instruments The host computer 86 comprises a CPU a display screen memory and one or more input devices such as a mouse or keyboard as shown The computer 86 connects through the one or more instruments to analyze measure or control a unit under test WUT or process 150 The one or more instruments may include a GPIB instru ment 112 and associated GPIB interface card 122 a data acquisition board 114 and associated signal conditioning cir cuitry 124 a VXI instrument 116 a PXI instrument 118 video device 132 and associated image acquisition card 134 a motion control device 136 and associated motion control interface card 138 and or one or more computer based instru ment cards 142 among other types of devices The GPIB instrument 112 is coupled to the computer 86 via the GPIB interface card 122 provided by the computer 86 In a similar manner the video device 132 is coupled to the computer 86 via the image acquisition card 134 and the motion control device 136 is cou
30. ed When the controls and indicators are created in the front panel corre sponding icons or terminals may be automatically created in the block diagram by the block diagram editor Alternatively the user can place terminal icons or input output blocks in the block diagram which may cause the display of corresponding front panel objects in the front panel either at edit time or at run time During creation of the graphical program the user selects various functions that accomplish his desired result and con nects the function icons together For example the functions may be connected in a data flow and or control flow format The functions may be connected between the terminals of the respective controls and indicators For example the user may create or assemble a data flow program referred to as a block diagram representing the graphical data flow which accom plishes his desired function The assembled graphical pro gram may then be compiled or interpreted to produce machine language that accomplishes the desired method or process as shown in the block diagram A user may input data to a virtual instrument using front panel controls This input data propagates through the data flow block diagram or graphical program and appears as changes on the output indicators In an instrumentation appli cation the front panel can be analogized to the front panel of an instrument In an industrial automation application the front panel can be ana
31. g languages such as for example assembly lan guage C FORTRAN BASIC or Pascal Traditional users of these systems however often were not highly trained in programming techniques and in addition traditional text based programming languages were not sufficiently intuitive to allow users to use these languages without training There fore implementation of such systems frequently required the involvement of a programmer to write software for control and analysis of instrumentation or industrial automation data Thus development and maintenance of the software elements in these systems often proved to be difficult U S Pat Nos 4 901 221 4 914 568 5 291 587 5 301 301 and 5 301 336 among others to Kodosky et al disclose a graphical system and method for modeling a process i e a graphical programming environment which enables a user to easily and intuitively model a process The graphical pro gramming environment disclosed in Kodosky et al can be considered the highest and most intuitive way in which to interact with a computer A graphically based programming environment can be represented at a level above text based high level programming languages such as C Pascal etc The method disclosed in Kodosky et al allows a user to construct a diagram using a block diagram editor such that the diagram created graphically displays a procedure or method for accomplishing a certain result such as manipulating one or more input variab
32. he node FIG 6 illustrates a simple block dia gram As a developer adds objects to the user interface panel the graphical programming environment may automatically create a corresponding object on the block diagram Such block diagram nodes which correspond to user interface panel objects are referred to herein as user interface nodes or terminals For example the FIG 6 block diagram node labeled The result of 2 0 3 0 was is a user interface node corresponding to the FIG 5 user interface output indicator User interface nodes may be connected with other objects or nodes in the block diagram to participate in the program logic and data control flow User interface nodes may map input output between a user interface panel and a block diagram For example the user interface node in FIG 6 receives data and displays the data in the corresponding user interface indicator in FIG 5 In step 422 of FIG 4 the developer adds other objects nodes to or edits other objects nodes of the graphical pro gram These objects or nodes may include function nodes which perform predefined functional operations such as numeric functions Boolean functions string functions array functions error functions file functions application control functions etc For example the block diagram shown in FIG 6 uses an addition function node to add two constants together In step 422 the developer may also add other types of nodes to the graphical program For e
33. hical program is usable by a user of the client com puter to analyze the graphical program executing on the server computer in real time 12 The method of claim 11 further comprising sending debugging information over the network to the server computer specifying modification of the graphi cal program and or execution of the graphical program on the server computer 13 The method of claim 12 further comprising receiving debugging results from the server computer over the network during said executing and displaying the debugging results on a display ofthe client computer during said executing 14 The method of claim 12 further comprising receiving user input specifying an editto the block diagram of the graphical program and providing the user input specifying the edit to the server computer over the network wherein the server computer is operable to edit the block diagram of the graphical program according to the user input specifying the edit 15 The method of claim 12 wherein said updating the display of the block diagram of the graphical program com prises illustrating operations of the graphical program using US 8 074 203 B2 19 execution highlighting to update the displayed block diagram to show real time execution of the graphical program 16 The method of claim 12 further comprising connecting to the server computer over the network after said receiving the user input wherein said receiving information descr
34. ibing the data updates of the block diagram of the graphical program is performed after said receiving the user input and said connecting and wherein the graphical program is already executing on the server computer when said connecting occurs or execu tion of the graphical program is launched in response to said connecting 17 The method of claim 12 wherein said updating the display of the block diagram of the graphical program com prises updating the display of the block diagram of the graphi cal program on a web browser 18 The method of claim 12 wherein the user input indi cating the graphical program comprises a uniform resource locator URL specifying one or more of the server computer or the graphical program on the server computer 5 20 19 The method of claim 12 further comprising displaying information indicating a plurality of graphical programs on the server computer wherein the user input indicating the graphical program selects the graphical program from the plurality of graphical programs 20 The method of claim 12 further comprising receiving user manipulated inputs of at least one input variable for the graphical program providing the user manipulated inputs of at least one input variable to the server computer over the network wherein the execution of the graphical program com prises the block diagram of the graphical program executing using the user manipulated inputs of at least one i
35. irement that a user program in a text based programming environment places a level of p i 0 20 30 40 45 2 abstraction between the user s conceptualization of the solu tion and the implementation of a method that accomplishes this solution in a computer program Thus a user often must substantially master different skills in order to both concep tually model a system and then to program a computer to model that system Since a user often is not fully proficient in techniques for programming a computer system in a text based environment to implement his model the efficiency with which the computer system can be utilized to perform such modeling often is reduced Examples of fields in which computer systems are employed to model and or control physical systems are the fields of instrumentation process control industrial automa tion and simulation Computer modeling or control of devices such as instruments or industrial automation hard ware has become increasingly desirable in view of the increasing complexity and variety of instruments and devices available for use However due to the wide variety of possible testing control situations and environments and also the wide array of instruments or devices available it is often necessary for auser to develop a program to control a desired system As discussed above computer programs used to control such systems had to be written in conventional text based pro grammin
36. l program on the remote computer Steps 450 and 452 may be combined into a single step As discussed above steps 450 and 452 may be accomplished in any of various ways For example the US 8 074 203 B2 13 remote computer and or the remote graphical program may be implicitly specified by a user specifying a URL which references the remote computer or the remote graphical pro gram Note that steps 450 and 452 are not necessarily per formed directly by a user but may also be performed pro grammatically For example a user may operate an application that provides a reference to a remote computer and remote graphical program to client software running on the user s machine which is described below In the preferred embodiment the user performs steps 450 and 452 by interacting with standard commonly available client software such as a web browser or an application including web browsing functionality e g an application using the Microsoft Internet Explorer code base For example the user may provide a URL to the browser appli cation and the browser application may then contact a web server and receive a list of graphical programs running on the web server computer or another computer The user may then select one or more of these graphical programs e g by click ing on a hypertext link etc Selecting a graphical program may then cause the user s browser application to invoke a browser plug in to handle the remaining steps of
37. les to produce one or more output variables In response to the user constructing a data flow diagram or graphical program using the block diagram editor data struc tures may be automatically constructed which characterize an execution procedure which corresponds to the displayed pro cedure The graphical program may be compiled or inter preted by a computer using these data structures Therefore a user can create a computer program solely by using a graphi cally based programming environment This graphically based programming environment may be used for creating virtual instrumentation systems industrial automation sys tems modeling processes and simulation as well as for any type of general programming Therefore Kodosky et al teaches a graphical programming environment wherein a user places or manipulates icons in a block diagram using a block diagram editor to create a graphi cal program A graphical program for controlling or mod eling devices such as instruments processes or industrial automation hardware is referred to as a virtual instrument US 8 074 203 B2 3 VI creating a virtual instrument a user may create a front panel or user interface panel The front panel includes various front panel objects such as controls or indicators that repre sent or display the respective input and output that will be used by the graphical program or VI and may include other icons which represent devices being controll
38. lient computer connecting In step 456 the user s client software requests the remote computer to send a description of the user interface panel s associated with the graphical program specified in step 452 Step 456 may be combined with step 454 In response to this request the remote computer sends the description ofthe user interface panel s In step 458 the user s client software e g web browser plug in receives the description of the user interface panel s and displays the user interface panel s appropriately In the preferred embodiment the user interface panel description s that the client software receives is a description based on or identical to the description that the remote computer uses to persistently store the user interface panel information In other words when a graphical program and its user interface panel is created and saved on the remote computer the infor mation describing the user interface panel is structured in a particular way In the preferred embodiment the user s client software is operable to parse this structured information and 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 14 display the user interface panel s appropriately on the user s display screen e g in the window of the user s web browser It is noted however that in alternative embodiments the remote computer may transform the user interface panel description s before sending the description s to the client computer
39. logized to the MMI Man Machine Interface ofa device The user may adjust the controls on the front panel to affect the input and view the output on the respective indicators Alternatively the front panel may be used merely to view the input and output and the input may not be interactively manipulable by the user during program execution Thus graphical programming has become a powerful tool available to programmers Graphical programming environ ments such as the National Instruments LabVIEW product have become very popular Tools such as LabVIEW have greatly increased the productivity of programmers and increasing numbers of programmers are using graphical pro gramming environments to develop their software applica tions In particular graphical programming tools are being used for test and measurement data acquisition process con trol man machine interface supervisory control and data acquisition SCADA applications simulation and machine vision applications among others In many scenarios it would be desirable to further separate the user interface panel also referred to above as the front panel of a graphical program from the block diagram of the graphical program For example a user developing an instru mentation application such as a test and measurement appli cation or a process control application may desire the graphi cal program to execute on a computer located in a laboratory or manufacturing facili
40. m Level DSP Design Tools Department of Electrical Engineering and Com puter Sciences University of California at Berkeley May 1996 4 pages Pino Jose Luis Software Synthesis for Single Processor DSP Sys tems Using Ptolemy Master s Report Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences University of California at Berkeley May 1993 48 pages Kalavade et al A Hardware Software Codesign Methodology for DSP Applications Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Sep 1993 12 pages Pino et al Automatic Code Generation for Heterogeneous Multi processors Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences University of California at Berkeley 1994 4 pages Bindra Ashok Tool chest continues to grow Electronic Engineer ing Times Dec 15 1995 2 pages Pino et al Mapping Multiple Independent Synchronous Dataflow Graphs onto Heterogeneous Multiprocessors Department of Elec trical Engineering and Computer Sciences University of California at Berkeley Oct 1994 6 pages Kalavade et al Hardware Software Co Design Using Ptolemy A Case Study Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences University of California at Berkeley Sep 1992 18 pages Pino et al Software Synthesis for DSP Using Ptolemy Depart ment of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences University of California at Berkeley Journal of VLSI Signal Processing 9
41. nd industrial automation applications However it is noted that the present invention can be used for a plethora of applications and is not limited to instrumen tation or industrial automation applications In other words FIGS 2A and 2B are exemplary only and users may remotely interact with graphical programs for any of various types of purposes in any of various applications FIG 3 Computer System Block Diagram FIG 3 is a block diagram of the computer system illus trated in FIGS 1 2A and 2B It is noted that any type of computer system configuration or architecture can be used as desired and FIG 3 illustrates a representative PC embodi ment It is also noted that the computer system may be a general purpose computer system as shown in FIGS 2A and 2B a computer implemented on a VXI card installed ina VXI chassis a computer implemented on PXI card installed in a PXI chassis or other types of embodiments The elements of a computer not necessary to understand the present invention have been omitted for simplicity The computer 86 or 82 includes at least one central pro cessing unit or CPU 160 which is coupled to a processor or host bus 162 The CPU 160 may be any of various types including an x86 processor e g a Pentium class a PowerPC processor a CPU from the SPARC family of RISC proces sors as well as others Main memory 166 is coupled to the host bus 162 by means of memory controller 164 main memory 166
42. nput variable and generating an output of at least one output variable receiving the output of at least one output variable over the network and displaying the output of at least one output variable on a display of the client computer
43. ny systems may only have one or more devices of a single inter face type such as only PLCs The devices are coupled to the device or process 150 Referring again to FIGS 2A and 2B the server computer system 86 preferably includes a memory medium on which one or more computer programs or software components according to the present invention are stored The term memory medium is intended to include an installation medium e g a CD ROM floppy disks 104 or tape device a computer system memory or random access memory such as DRAM SRAM EDO RAM Rambus etc or a non volatile memory such as a magnetic media e g a hard drive or optical storage The memory medium may comprise other types of memory as well or combinations thereof In addition the memory medium may be located in a first computer in which the programs are executed or may be located in a second different computer which connects to the first computer over a network such as the Internet In the latter instance the second computer provides the program instructions to the first computer for execution The server computer system 86 may take any of various forms In a similar manner the client computer system 82 may take any of various forms including a personal computer system workstation network appliance Internet appliance personal digital assistant PDA television system or other device In general the term computer system can be broadly defined
44. o address web pages anywhere in the world In one embodiment the remote graphical program executes within a graphical programming environment including functionality referred to as VI Server VI Server functionality may be used to enable user clients to connect to and interact with a remote graphical program For more infor mation on VI Server please refer to the patent applications incorporated by reference below BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS A better understanding of the present invention can be obtained when the following detailed description of the pre 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 6 ferred embodiment is considered in conjunction with the following drawings in which FIG 1 illustrates a computer system connected through a network to a second computer system FIGS 2A and 2B illustrate representative instrumentation and process control systems including various I O interface options FIG 3 is a block diagram of the computer system of FIGS 1 2A and 2B FIG 4 is a flowchart diagram illustrating one embodiment of interactively creating or editing a graphical program FIGS 5 and 6 illustrate a simple graphical program com prising a user interface panel and a block diagram and FIG 7 is a flowchart diagram illustrating one embodiment of a user accessing a remote graphical program FIGS 8 10 illustrate exemplary graphical programs and their associated user interfaces While the in
45. on Plug In Data Acquisition Conditioning 150 Unit Under Test Computer Based Instruments A 1 US 8 074 203 B2 Sheet 3 of 12 Dec 6 2011 U S Patent gc 94 559204 4 ye m gt 05 STD gt 05005 snjnuins 951 2 22 Z 4 AS P uonisinboy cgi 92 N jeuas jeubls 8h spueog uonisinboy ejeq u 6nig juiogpjer US 8 074 203 B2 Sheet 4 of 12 Dec 6 2011 U S Patent OTT SISSeU XA 98T 9H LLS 217 8199 ee 81 081 uonisinbov 9 OZ sng uoisuedxa3 891 sng yor JejoJuo2 991 U S Patent Dec 6 2011 Sheet 5 of 12 US 8 074 203 B2 user creates or edits a user interface panel for controls and indicators 420 user adds objects edits objects and or connects objects of the graphical program such as functional blocks and programmatic structures etc 422 user saves or runs the graphical program 426 FIG 4 U S Patent Dec 6 2011 Sheet 6 of 12 US 8 074 203 B2 ES Example vi IP x Fils Edi Operate Project Windows Help fi n i3ptaopicaionFon The tesut of 2 0 3 0 was 5 00 FIG 5 El Edit
46. on the server computer in real time 2 The non transitory computer accessible memory medium of claim 1 wherein the program instructions are further executable to perform receiving information from the client computer over the network specifying debugging ofthe graphical program and modifying the graphical program and or execution of the graphical program on the server computer in response to the information specifying debugging US 8 074 203 B2 17 3 The non transitory computer accessible memory medium of claim 2 further comprising receiving at least one user specified edit to the block dia gram of the graphical program from the client computer over the network and editing the block diagram of the graphical program accord ing to the at least one user specified edit 4 The non transitory computer accessible memory medium of claim 2 wherein the information describing the data updates of the block diagram of the graphical program is useable by the client computer to update the display of the block diagram of the graphical program on the client com puter to illustrate operations of the graphical program using execution highlighting to update the displayed block diagram to show real time execution of the graphical program 5 The non transitory computer accessible memory medium of claim 1 wherein the program instructions are further executable to perform providing debugging results to the client computer over the netw
47. ork during said executing wherein the debugging results are useable for display on the client computer during said executing 6 The non transitory computer accessible memory medium of claim 1 wherein the user provided information indicating the graphical program comprises a uniform resource locator URL specifying one or more of the server computer or the graphical program on the server computer 7 The non transitory computer accessible memory medium of claim 1 wherein the program instructions are further executable to perform providing information to the client computer indicating a plurality of graphical programs on the server computer wherein the user provided information indicating the graphical program comprises a user selection of the graphical program from the plurality of graphical pro grams 8 The non transitory computer accessible memory medium of claim 1 wherein the program instructions are further executable to perform receiving user manipulated inputs of at least one input variable of the graphical program over the network from the client computer executing the block diagram of the graphical program using the user manipulated inputs of at least one input variable to generate an output of at least one output variable and providing the output of at least one output variable over the network to the client computer for display on the client computer 9 The non transitory computer accessible memory medium of cl
48. own in FIG 9B simulates an appli cation that uses GPIB instruments to perform a frequency response test on a unit under test UUT function generator supplies a sinusoidal input to the UUT a bandpass filter in this example and a digital multimeter measures the output voltage of the UUT The block diagram shown in FIG 10B simulates a tem perature analysis application This program reads a simulated temperature sends an alarm if it is outside a given range and determines a statistical mean standard deviation and histo gram of the temperature history The example graphical programs shown in FIGS 8 10 directed toward instrumentation industrial automation or process control applications The user interface panels for these programs include various controls or display readouts similar to what may appear on a hardware instrument or console However as discussed above program developers and end users working in many different fields may benefit from the system and method described herein to enable dis tributed display and or control of a graphical program user interface for any of various types of applications Although the system and method of the present invention has been described in connection with the preferred embodi ment it is not intended to be limited to the specific form set forth herein but on the contrary it is intended to cover such alternatives modifications and equivalents as can be reason ably include
49. pled to the computer 86 through the motion control interface card 138 The data acquisition board 114 is coupled to the computer 86 and may interface through signal conditioning circuitry 124 to the UUT The signal conditioning circuitry 124 preferably com prises an SCXI Signal Conditioning eXtensions for Instru mentation chassis comprising one or more SCXI modules 126 The GPIB card 122 the image acquisition card 134 the motion control interface card 138 and the DAQ card 114 are typically plugged in to an slot in the computer 86 such as a PCI bus slot a PC Card slot or an ISA EISA or Micro Channel bus slot provided by the computer 86 However these cards 122 134 138 and 114 are shown external to computer 86 for illustrative purposes The VXI chassis or instrument 116 is coupled to the com puter 86 viaa VXI bus bus or other serial or parallel bus provided by the computer 86 The computer 86 preferably includes VXI interface logic such as a VXI MXI or GPIB interface card not shown which interfaces to the VXI chas sis 116 The PXI chassis or instrument is preferably coupled to the computer 86 through the computer s PCI bus A serial instrument not shown may also be coupled to the computer 86 through a serial port such as an RS 232 port USB Universal Serial bus or IEEE 1394 or 1394 2 bus provided by the computer 86 In typical instrumentation con trol systems an instrument will not be present of each inter
50. plication such as a web browser or other application with web browsing functionality As described below the application may include a protocol han dler plug in enabled to process the URL and connect to the remote computer When the user specifies the remote computer running the graphical program the user may also specify the particular graphical program desired For example a parameter indicat ingthe name ofthe graphical program may be appended to the URL etc The user may also specify the remote computer without also specifying the particular graphical program For example the remote computer may comprise a web server The user may enter the URL ofa web page associated with the web server and the web server may return a list of graphical programs running on the remote computer The user may then select one or more graphical programs from this list The user s client software is operable to then display the user interface panels associated with the selected graphical pro gram s on the user s display screen In one embodiment the user s client software comprises a web browser or application with web browsing functional ity with a plug in operable to communicate with the remote graphical program In this embodiment the plug in may dis play the user interface panel directly in the web browser s US 8 074 203 B2 5 window The user s client software preferably communicates with an agent or software program running on the remote
51. red In the embodiment shown in FIG 4 the steps are per formed by a developer creating or editing a graphical program in a graphical programming environment As shown in step 420 the developer may create or edit a user interface panel for displaying a graphical user interface The user interface panel may comprise controls for accepting user input displaying information such as program output or both For example the user interface panel may include buttons selectable lists text boxes graph controls images etc A developer may drop various controls or other objects onto the user inter face panel e g by selecting the desired control from a control palette FIG 5 illustrates a simple user interface panel Step 420 is not necessarily performed For example a user inter face panel may not be desired a user interface panel may be inherently specified during creation of the block diagram or auser interface panel may automatically be created as the user creates the executable portions of the graphical program In step 422 the developer creates or edits the executable portion of the graphical program which may referred to as a block diagram A graphical program may include a block diagram comprising objects referred to herein as nodes which are connected together to model the program execution logic data flow and or control flow A block diagram node may be displayed as an icon representing the type or func tionality of t
52. reg Richardson and Dean A Luick FIG 1 Computer System Connected to a Network FIG 1 illustrates an exemplary computer network in which a computer system 82 is connected through a network 84 to a second computer system 86 computer system 82 and the second computer system 86 can be any of various types as desired The network 84 can also be any of various types including a LAN local area network WAN wide area net Work or the Internet among others user of computer system 82 may connect to computer system 86 according to the system and method described herein Computer system 82 which may be referred to as client computer system 82 comprises client software enabled to receive a description of a graphical program user interface panel and display the panel on the display screen of computer system 82 For example the client software may comprise a web browser with a web browser plug in For example the web browser may be the Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser and the plug in may be constructed according to Microsoft s Asynchronous Pluggable Protocols specifica tion Computer system 86 which may be referred to as server computer system 86 comprises a graphical program as well as server side programs or agents enabling the user of com puter system 82 to communicate with computer system 86 according to the present invention For example computer system 86 may include VI Server functionality as discussed above
53. s IEEE 1996 10 pages Moulton et al Remote programmability of graphic interactions in a host satellite configuration ACM 1976 pp 204 211 Shaheen et al Remote Laboratory Experimentation IEEE Pro ceeding of American Control Conference pp 1326 1329 Jun 1998 Gillet et al Telepresence An Opportunity to Develop Real World Experimentation Education European Control Conference Jul 1997 pp 1 6 Brussels Belgium Ross et al The design and programming of a display interface system integrating multi access and satellite computers 1967 1 14 De Coster Grape II An Introduction Automatic Control and Computer Architectures Department Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Belgium Feb 22 1996 retrieved Oct 6 1999 retrieved from the Internet http www esat kuleuven ac be acca 25 pages Collamati et al Induction Machine Stator Fault On Line Diagnosis Based on LabVIEW Environment Mediterranean Electrotechnical Conference vol 1 p 495 498 May 1996 Spoelder et al Virtual Instrumentation A Survey of Standards and Their Interrelation Proc IEEE Instr and Measurement Tech Conf vol 1 pp 676 681 May 1997 Srinivasan et al LabVIEW Program Design for On Line Data Acquisition and Predictive Maintenance Proc Of the 30th South eastern Symposium on System Theory pp 520 524 Mar 1998 Wahidanabanu et al Virtual Instrumentation with Graphi
54. splay screen 450 user specifies graphical program running on the remote computer 42 users client software connects to the remote computer ed user user interface panei s to control the graphical progra US 8 074 203 2 Page 2 U S PATENT DOCUMENTS 5 283 861 2 1994 Dangler et al 5 309 556 A 5 1994 Sismilich 5 377 318 A 12 1994 Wolber 5 437 464 A 8 1995 Terasima et al 5 481 740 A 1 1996 Kodosky 5 497 498 A 3 1996 Taylor 5 535 342 A 7 1996 Taylor 5 541 849 7 1996 Rostoker et al 5 544 320 A 8 1996 Konrad 5 555 201 9 1996 Dangelo et al 5 566 295 A 10 1996 Cypher et al 5 583 749 12 1996 Tredennick et al 5 603 043 2 1997 Taylor et al 5 638 299 6 1997 Miller 5 652 875 7 1997 Taylor 5 652 909 7 1997 Kodosky 5 684 980 A 11 1997 Casselman 5 724 074 3 1998 Chainani et al 5 732 277 A 3 1998 Kodosky et al 5 737 235 4 1998 Kean et al 5 760 788 A 6 1998 Chainani et al 5 784 275 A 7 1998 Sojoodi et al 5 801 689 9 1998 Huntsman 5 949 412 A 9 1999 Huntsman 6 020 881 A 2 2000 Naughton et al 6 064 409 A 5 2000 Thomsen et al 6 102 965 8 2000 Dye et al 6 138 150 A 10 2000 Nichols et al 6 173 438 Bl 6 219 628 6 226 776 Bl 1 2001 et al 4 2001 Kodosky et al 5 2001 Panchul et al 6 230 307 Bl 5 2001 Davis et al 6 313 851 B1 11 2001 Matthews et al FOREIGN PATENT DOCUMENTS EP 0398646 11 1990 EP 0426909 5 1991 WO 94 10627 5
55. terminal of the addition function node 15 connected to the input of the user interface indicator node so that the result of the addition operation is displayed in the user interface panel shown in FIG 5 Programmatic structure objects may also include terminals which integrate them with the other objects of the graphical program For example a while loop may comprise a condi tion terminal to which an output terminal of a node supplying a Boolean value may be connected to signify when the loop should end For more information on one embodiment of creating or editing a graphical program please see the various LabVIEW User and Developer manuals and LabVIEW version 5 1 available from National Instruments Corporation which are hereby incorporated by reference In step 426 of FIG 4 the developer saves or runs the graphical program The graphical program may be saved in any of various formats For example a tree of data structures may be built which represents the various elements of the graphical program and the relationships among the elements and the data structures may be saved in a binary or text format These data structures may be compiled into machine code or interpreted during execution If the graphical program includes user interface panels these panels may also be saved In step 426 the developer may also execute the graphi cal program The developer may run the graphical program in any of various ways For example a graphical
56. to encompass any device having at least one processor which executes instructions from a memory medium In one embodiment the memory medium of the server computer 86 stores software programs for communicating with the client computer system 82 according to the present invention For example the server computer 86 may store network communication software e g TCP IP software and may also store application level software such as a graphical programming system enabled to communicate with remote computers 20 25 30 40 45 50 55 65 10 In one embodiment the memory medium of the client computer 82 stores software programs for communicating with the server computer system 86 according to the present invention For example the client computer 82 may store a standard user agent such as a web browser or other applica tion with web browsing functionality and possibly a special ized browser plug in for communicating with the server com puter In one embodiment the graphical program that users may remotely view or control is a program for data acquisition generation analysis and or display or for controlling or modeling instrumentation or industrial automation hardware For example in the preferred embodiment the graphical pro gram is a program constructed using the National Instruments LabVIEW graphical programming environment application which provides specialized support for developers of instru mentation a
57. ty but may want to interact with the program by viewing the program s user interface panel from another computer such as a workstation located in the user s office As another example a program developer may con struct a graphical program and desire to enable others to interact with or view the results ofthe program For example the program developer may desire to enable multiple Internet users to connect to the computer running the graphical pro gram and view the graphical program s user interface 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 4 It would thus be desirable to provide a general system and method for enabling various types of graphical programs having various types of user interface panels to export their user interface panels as described above with a minimal amount of programming effort It may also be desirable to provide the above capabilities using common networking and software standards so that users working on various types of computing platforms could connect to the remote computer running the graphical program view the user interface panel of the graphical program and possibly also use the user interface panel to remotely use or control the graphical pro gram It may also be desirable to require users to install a minimal amount of client software in order to gain these abilities and or to enable the necessary client software to be automatically downloaded and installed SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
58. vention is susceptible to various modifications and alternative forms specific embodiments are shown by way of example in the drawings and are herein described in detail It should be understood however that drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit the invention to the particular form disclosed But on the contrary the invention is to cover all modifications equivalents and alternative following within the spirit and scope of the present invention as defined by the appended claims DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Incorporation by Reference The following references are hereby incorporated by ref erence in their entirety as though fully and completely set forth herein U S patent application Ser No 08 912 445 titled Embed ded Graphical Programming System filed Aug 18 1997 U S patent application Ser No 08 810 079 titled System and Method for Developing Automation Clients Using a Graphical Data Flow Program filed Mar 4 1997 U S patent application Ser No 08 916 005 titled System and Method for Providing Client Server Access to Graphical Programs filed Aug 21 1997 U S patent application Ser No 09 136 123 titled System and Method for Accessing Object Capabilities in a Graphical Program filed Aug 18 1998 U S patent application Ser No 09 518 492 titled System and Method for Programmatically Creating a Graphical Pro gram filed Mar 3 2000 U
59. xample nodes may be added which represent numeric constants FIG 6 illustrates numeric constant nodes representing the floating point con stants 2 0 and 3 0 Other types of nodes which may be added include subpro gram nodes for calling a graphical subprogram global or local variable nodes for defining and using variables etc In step 422 the developer may also add other types of objects to the graphical program For example objects representing programmatic structures such as for loops while loops case structures etc may be added The developer may add nodes and other types of objects to a graphical program in various ways e g by selecting a node or object from a palette that displays icons representing the various nodes and objects 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 12 In step 422 of FIG 4 the developer may also connect or wire the graphical program objects in order to achieve the desired executable logic data flow and or control flow For example the objects may include input and output terminals and the developer may connect the output terminal of one node to the input terminal of another node etc FIG 6 illus trates one embodiment of how objects may be connected In this example output terminals of the two numeric constant nodes are connected to the input terminals of an addition function node The addition function node performs the addi tion operation on the numeric input The output
60. y high level text based programming lan guages have been used by programmers in writing application programs Many different high level text based programming languages exist including BASIC C FORTRAN Pascal COBOL ADA APL etc Programs written in these high level languages are translated to the machine language level by translators known as compilers or interpreters The high level text based programming languages in this level as well as the assembly language level are referred to as text based pro gramming environments Increasingly computers are required to be used and pro grammed by those who are not highly trained in computer programming techniques When traditional text based pro gramming environments are used the user s programming skills and ability to interact with the computer system often become a limiting factor in the achievement of optimal utili zation of the computer system There are numerous subtle complexities which a user must master before he can efficiently program a computer system in a text based environment The task of programming a computer system to model a process often is further compli cated by the fact that a sequence of mathematical formulas mathematical steps or other procedures customarily used to conceptually model a process often does not closely corre spond to the traditional text based programming techniques used to program a computer system to model such a process In other words the requ

Graphical program execution with distributed block diagram display

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