TABLE OF CONTENTS The Web already has changed the way companies do business; they can quickly share information and communicate with their customers. They also can sell their products and visually present information in a way that never was possible before. With LabVIEW 6.0, National Instruments showed how the user can use the Web to improve the way engineers design, manufacture, and test products, and to decrease design time. The effect that Web-enabled distributed applications have had on the measurement and automation industry has made implementation not merely an advantage, but a necessity for any company that wants to remain competitive.
In the realm of test and measurement, distributed applications offer numerous advantages over conventional applications. Distributed applications can harness the power of networking so that the user can perform different aspects of the application in the location where it is most appropriate. The platform is fundamentally the same, but the deployment capabilities of the platform are enhanced radically. By using network technologies in the measurement solutions, the user can perform I/O on the production floor, deploy additional processing power for in-depth analysis in the control center, log and store postanalysis information to a corporate database, and display key information to clients around the world in a Web browser. The essential tool that is required to tie all of these pieces together is the software. LabVIEW provides a platform for designing the test system to take advantage of all the latest technologies while providing an environment...
