Arguably one of the most complex pieces of software ever, National Instruments' LabView has no real competition in the area of data acquisition and control of laboratory equipment and instruments. LabView 5.0 expands on the program's original theme of connecting lab instruments and computers, theoretically allowing all instruments and all computers to be connected via the Web. It's gigantic—a typical installation might involve 200MB of support files and programs in LabView's graphical programming language—but mastering LabView is definitely worth the effort.
The LabView Picture
From the beginning, LabView has used a virtual-instrument front panel as its interface (see “The View Up Front”); you can wire together a set of icons on screen to make the panels functional. In the first version's diagram-based programming, this meant diagrams with a few simple functions—mostly “virtual components” for operational amplifiers and other familiar lab-electronics components, or complete virtual instruments (standard commercial meters, amplifiers, and scopes) from a library—and most users could put together a basic but usable instrumentation interface in an afternoon. The fundamental concept is simple: once you convert an analog voltage or current into a digital value, the computer can handle any further processing of that value—something that once required lab hardware.
As National instruments evolved a set of functions and virtual instruments to cover every possible data-analysts situation, two issues arose: the sheer complexity ol programs, and the lack of serious debugging and version control in the graphical programming environment.
To resolve the first problem, LabView 5.0 adds three wizards. One wizard leads you through a series of dialog boxes to help you set up the correct data-acquisition protocol; an input-channel wizard mathematically conditions signal inputs, typically converting a voltage to a physical measurement value such as temperature, luminosity, or sound intensity; and an instrument wizard scans your physical input/output connections and installs drivers that let LabView control the instruments attached via standard instrumentation-bus hardware to your Mac. If you're already using LabView, these wizards alone justify the $295 upgrade.
The other issue version 5.0 resolves is the program's previous lack of serious debugging and version control in the graphical programming environment, known as G. This environment now makes it easy to identify and report differences among G-language diagrams, a unique facility that really helps on large projects with several contributors.
As a product that could have saved Three Mile Island in its spare time, LabView 5.0 can tackle larger instrumentation and control problems than you'll probably ever face. The downside is that LabView’s scope has widened to the point that the program is overkill for data-logging activities in smaller labs with only a few instruments. For those situations, hardware and software from Remote Measurement Systems (www.measure .com) or GW Instruments (www.gwinst .com) would be more appropriate. Note that l am reviewing the complete LabView developer's kit; the $995 base package omits the tools, notably version control, targeted at group programming efforts.
Wired to the World
At its most basic level, LabView 5.0 adapts to the Web's ubiquity by automatically generating documentation for an instrument diagram in HTML. The new version also supports local intranet-distributed computing: specifically, simple code tools let you set up one networked computer as the controller of other computers, which are connected to instrumentation in labs across the network.
LabView 5.0 gives you two ways to monitor and control your equipment from a computer anywhere in the world. One is with automation-server software: from within C, Microsoft Excel, or LabView G-language programs on remote systems, you can make calls to LabView running on a server.
The other method—operating LabView's virtual instruments from within a Web browser—is a little trickier, because LabView is now an ActiveX container, meaning that it can edit and use ActiveX controls (including standard controls for opening Web browsers and passing information). An assortment of ActiveX controls is available from National Instruments, and more are being developed by third parties. This reliance on ActiveX for Web-connection tasks is unfortunate, since few Mac programmers see ActiveX as a better choice than Java for complex jobs, (National Instruments worked closely with Microsoft to develop parts of this package, and ActiveX probably looked like a safe bet at the time.)
The ideal of operating lab equipment, quality-control inspection devices, and safety-monitoring equipment remotely through a Web connection isn't quite here yet, but LabView provides the tools that, with some additional programming effort, can make the ideal a reality.
Seiter, Charles. (July 1998). LabView 5.0. Macworld. (pg. 36).
National Instruments
Applications
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LabVIEW-5-FDS.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
SheepShaver
