Chapter 13: Software Engineering Primer*

Chapter 13: Software Engineering Primer*

Gregg Fowler

National Instruments


	*	Copyright National Instruments Corporation (1997). Reprinted with the permission of copyright owner. All rights reserved.

Overview

Software engineering is the field of study related to defining the best processes for developing software, and the main goal of this chapter is to help LabVIEW users apply these techniques to G code development. Most of the techniques developed in software engineering apply to graphical programming languages just as well as they apply to textual programming languages.

Some people think that you have to be a formally trained computer scientist to apply the principles of this field. On the contrary, software engineering is based on common sense that anyone can understand, and you can (and should) take a graded approach to its application. For instance, an extensive design and testing process is desirable when your software controls a potentially hazardous system, whereas for a quick benchtop test program, you need not bother.

This chapter works in conjunction with Chap. 14, ?LabVIEW Software Quality Assurance Guide and Toolkit,? which describes another fundamental aspect of software engineering: quality management . You should also consider acquiring a copy of the Professional G Developers Toolkit from National Instruments; it contains many useful development tools and recommendations for large projects. This chapter was derived from the manual included with that toolkit.

Development Models

G , the graphical programming language of LabVIEW and BridgeVIEW, makes it easy to assemble components of data acquisition,...

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