LabVIEW ORM Library - version 1

LabVIEW ORM Library is a implementation that aims to provide LabVIEW developers with a simple tool capable of abstracting the SQL operations. You can read about this project in my LabVIEW OverEngineering Blog.

This library uses PostgreSQL as database. Future versions of this tool may - or may not - provide the code needed to interface with other databases.

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THIS IS A DRAFT!

And most important, this is a Work In Progress. Things WILL break and I'm sure the final version will differ a lot from this first draft. Also, the first version of this library is just a Proof Of Concept. Do not expect this to be supported or even to work with different data setups.

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How to install?

1. Download and Install PostgreSQL. It'll also instal pgAdmin - a Web Interface for managing postgresql servers and databases and StackBuilder.

2. Install Windows ODBC Drivers for PGSQL using StackBuilder, or Download it directly from Software Catalogue. Check the bitness of the driver you will use: For LabVIEW 32bits, use the respective bitness ODBC driver - PostgreSQL ODBC for 32 bits. If unsure, install both 32 and 64 bits and the system will handle which driver to use ( mostly... )

3. Create or edit user and password if you want.

   In my case, user and password is 'postgres', the default username and password. For production, you may want to create another user. This is not our focus here, so Read the Docs if interested.

4. Create an UDL File (create an text file and rename it to have a .UDL extension):

   a. Open the UDL file. a. At the first tab, Provider, select Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers; b. At the second tab, Connection, follow the procedure:

   • Select Use a Connection Chain;
   • Click on Create...;
   • Select the Machine Data Sources tab;
   • Click on New....
   • You can choose to create the DSN either to your user or to all users of this machine.¹ Select the desider option.
   • Now you'll choose the PostgreSQL Driver you installed in the second step. Select PostgreSQL ODBC Driver(XXX)and click Next....
   • Configure the name you want to show and use when referencing to the DSN. For this example, we'll create a Data Source called LV-ORM-DSN.
   • You can also select the database you want to use or leave it blank and specify later. PostgreSQL's default database is named postgres. For now, we'll use this one.
   • Click Save.

5. If you want, explore your new database by opening pgAdmin4.

How to use?

To run the supplied demo, open the LabVIEW Project ( version >= 2018 ).

1. Open the 1- LV-ORM v1 Project;
2. Open the main - demo lvORM.vi;
3. Supply the UDL File you want to use via the connection information constant in the block diagram. If you're using your UDL file inside the project root, just replace the value in constant with filename.udl.
4. Run the VI.
5. If no errors appear, try to create your first object clicking in Add...
6. Save your object and navigate.
7. If you want to see your object stored into the database, open the pgAdmin.

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Footnotes

1. Creating an user DataSource will prevent you to run the final executable with a different user than the one that configured the machine. For deployment, you probably should create a system-wide DSN. To create a system DSN, open the file with administrative privileges. ↩