JKI Software Products

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VIPM Powers the NI LabVIEW Tools Network

by JKI on August 3, 2010 in Company News, VIPM | 2 comments

LabVIEW Tools Network JKI is pleased to announce that VI Package Manager™ 2010 (VIPM) is the official download vehicle of National Instruments’ LabVIEW™ Tools Network (LVTN). This represents the culmination of a lot hard work, in collaboration with National Instruments, to make it easy for LabVIEW users everywhere to create, share, and sell LabVIEW Add-ons.

VIPM 2010 includes lots of great features specifically tailored to help users find and install LabVIEW Add-ons from the LVTN, and to help add-on developers distribute their products to thousands of users and customers around the world.

If you’re a LabVIEW User…

VIPM 2010 automatically connects you to the LVTN. You can use VIPM’s built-in search features to find the LabVIEW Add-ons you need and can install them into your LabVIEW environment in just a couple clicks. VIPM also notifies you when new versions of your add-ons are available and makes upgrading them a breeze.

If you’re a LabVIEW Add-on Developer…

VIPM’s “VI Package” format is the fastest, most efficient, and lowest-risk way to put your product in front of thousands of LabVIEW users on the LVTN.

VIPM’s built-in features like palette generation, platform requirements settings, and dynamic license and activation binding (via NI’s Licensing and Activation Toolkit) make it easy to comply with all the requirements to submit your add-on to the LVTN. This means that your add-on will be less likely to be rejected by NI on review.

Once your add-on is published to the LVTN, it will appear automatically in the package list of every VIPM user. Thousands of LabVIEW users will immediately be able to install and evaluate (and buy!) your LabVIEW Add-on.

These reasons and more are why National Instruments recommends VIPM for building LabVIEW Add-ons for the LabVIEW Tools Network. Visit our VIPM product page to learn more about VIPM and get started downloading, creating, and sharing LabVIEW Add-ons today!

VIPM 2010 Private Beta is Live

by JKI on June 10, 2010 in Company News, VIPM | 1 comment

VIPM 2010 has entered beta testing…

and we need your help!

VIPM 2010 has lots of cool improvements like major performance boosts, better configuration management tools, and support for 64-bit LabVIEW.  But more importantly, it sports a completely redesigned Package Builder that lets you package any type of LabVIEW Add-on you can think of.

Can you prove us wrong?  Is there a special kind of package you’ve been unable to build because VIPM (until now) didn’t support what you needed?  Are you an enthusiastic VIPM user and you want to help us improve the product before we ship it?

If any of those apply to you, please go here and sign up for the VIPM 2010 Beta Program.

We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback!

EasyXML 2.0 Released, Brings Performance Improvements and Fixes

by JKI on March 31, 2010 in Company News, EasyXML

We’ve just released EasyXML 2.0, a major update to the tool that makes generating and parsing XML data with LabVIEW as easy as creating a cluster!

What’s New in EasyXML 2.0?

EasyXML 2.0 includes major performance improvements when parsing XML.  It also fixes several bugs.  See the EasyXML 2.0 Release Notes for full details.

Download EasyXML

You can download & install the demo version of EasyXML using VI Package Manager.  Just press the “Check the Network for Available Packages” button to refresh your package list, and then install the jki_lib_easyxml-2.0-1 package.  The demo version of EasyXML is fully functional, but periodically displays a reminder dialog urging you to upgrade to the paid version.

Purchase EasyXML

If you try EasyXML and like it, you can purchase the full version of EasyXML in our store.

Special Discount for Existing EasyXML Customers

JKI is pleased to offer a free upgrade to EasyXML 2.0 for any customers who purchased EasyXML on or after January 1, 2010.  We also offer a 35% discount on EasyXML 2.0 to all other previous EasyXML customers.  If you are an existing EasyXML customer, you should be receiving an email with instructions on how to redeem these discounts.  If you don’t, please send an email to customer-service@jkisoft.com with your original Order # or the email address you used to place the order, and let us know!

VIPM 3.0 is Incompatible with LabVIEW 2010 Beta – Fix is on the Way!

by JKI on March 4, 2010 in Company News, VIPM | No comments

There is a known issue using VIPM 3.0 that prevents VIPM from managing VI Packages installed in LabVIEW 2010 beta.  We’ve identified the cause and will have a new version of VIPM (3.0.1) out soon that fixes the issue.  If you need this fix immediately and/or would like to help test the release candidate, please contact us.

Bug photo courtesy of spakattacks.

JKI State Machine & EasyXML Make Popcorn, Go Viral (video)

by Justin Goeres on February 9, 2010 in Company News, JKI State Machine | 1 comment

A weird thing happened a few days ago.  The JKI State Machine went viral.

If you follow me on Twitter or are my Facebook friend, you would’ve known right away about the LabVIEW-, LEGO Mindstorms-, and Twitter-powered popcorn-popping contraption a friend and I built recently.  We built it to enter a contest, where the object was to make a video showing the “most inventive way to pop this all-American snack.”

Our first idea was a winner:  Crowd-sourced Popcorn.

Since we uploaded it last week, the video has gone viral.  It was picked up first by Engadget, but things got really big when it hit Mashable.  Even now, there’s a steady stream of #popcorn tweets on Twitter, as people send the link around and around to their friends.  Most importantly, we won the contest.

What does this have to do with JKI?

If you watch the video, you can clearly see that the famous JKI State Machine plays a starring role.  I got to thinking, though, that the JKI State Machine is by no means the only important piece of the puzzle.  I used a whole bunch of JKI products!

We didn’t spend a lot of time designing and building the Popcorn Tweets system.  After all, I have a real job at JKI.  But luckily, I live in a world where NI makes great products like LabVIEW, and where NI partners like JKI can extend the platform and provide great tools to help people turn any idea into reality!

Want More Technical Info?

I’ve posted a technical overview of the system on NI’s LabVIEW DIY Crew group.  Check it out!

New in VIPM 3.0: VIPM is Now Faster than Ever!

by Jim Kring on October 13, 2009 in VIPM | 1 comment

In my last article, I talked about one of the major new features in VIPM 3.0: the ability to manage your own VI Package Repository.  Repository management is critical to JKI because we have one of the largest reusable LabVIEW code libraries in the world (hundreds of packages, thousands of VIs), and it’s all managed using VIPM.  That’s what we mean when we talk about eating our own dogfood.

Having the world’s largest VI Package repository means that we can identify scaling problems before they start to affect our customers.  That’s why we identified some key bottlenecks when using VIPM to manage large repositories, and fixed them in VIPM 3.0.  The result is that VIPM 3.0 is faster than VIPM 2.0, especially when dealing with large numbers of packages.  Here are a few of the benefits you’ll see as a VIPM user:

Faster initial setup time for new VIPM users

In VIPM 2.0, you might have noticed that it could take several minutes for VIPM to download information from the VI Package Network about all the packages available.  Now, in VIPM 3.0, we’ve implemented lazy downloading of package information (see the lazy acquisition design pattern [PDF] for more info), which means that VIPM downloads only the information it needs, right when it needs it.

Faster “Check Network for Package Updates”

Another effect of the lazy downloading of packages (described above) is a faster check for package updates.

Faster Installation and use of VI Packages and VI Package Configurations

We’ve optimized the zipping and unzipping of VI Packages and VI Package Configurations.  We found some areas where we were using high-level OpenG Zip Tools functions, but there were more optimal ways to use some of the lower-level functions.  This means that saving and loading of VI Packages & VI Package Configurations is now a lot faster.  You’ll notice a big difference especially when working with large VIPC files.

Faster Package Search and Column Sorting

We noticed that when there were a lot of packages in VIPM’s package list, the search and column sorting got a little slow.  So, we took a close look and found some ways to optimize this.  This wasn’t rocket science; VIPM mostly just caches certain data now, rather than recalculating it every time the search/sort operation is performed.  The result is that searching your package list for the package you want will be more responsive with larger numbers of packages in your library.

We hope you find VIPM 3.0’s performance to be better than ever.  If you haven’t downloaded it already, what are you waiting for?  Get it now!

And, stay tuned for more articles about “What’s new in VIPM 3.0?“

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New in VIPM 3.0: Manage Your Own VI Package Repository

by Jim Kring on October 6, 2009 in VIPM | 1 comment

JKI has just released VIPM 3.0, and there are some great new features that I’d like to share with you.  So, I’m going to be blogging about them in a series called “What’s new in VIPM 3.0?”  (of course, you can check out the release notes for a quick overview).

One of the most important new features in VIPM 3.0 is the ability to create and manage your own VI Package Repository using VIPM Enterprise.  Now you can find, download, and install VI Packages of your team’s reusable code from a VI Package Repository located on your corporate network or the Internet.  Your developers will be able to install and use your VI Packages just as easily as they install and use packages from OpenG or JKI Software!

VIPM Enterprise Reuse System

How Does It Work?

Sharing VI Packages with VIPM Enterprise is easy.  VIPM provides a Repository Manager window that lets you create a VI Package Repository on any standard file or web server.  Using the Repository Manager window, you can see what’s in your repository, add or remove packages from the repository, and manage users’ access to the repository.  To publish a package, just drag & drop a package file from Windows Explorer into the Repository Manager window.

Publish a VI Package

Once the VI Package has been published to your VI Package Repository, VIPM users on your team will get a message from VIPM, telling them that the new package is available for download and installation into LabVIEW.

New Packages

VIPM is so “Web 2.0″

As an added bonus, VIPM allows you to publish an RSS feed of your package releases, so your team can also receive notifications of package releases in any RSS reader (Outlook, Google Reader, Thunderbird, etc.).  Now go tweet your coworkers, telling them that your LabVIEW code reuse system is Web 2.0 compatible! :)

RSS Feed

But that’s not all!  VIPM 3.0 includes other cool features, like:

  • User Management — VIPM lets you control which users are authorized to access your VI Package Repository.
  • VI Package Deprecation — VIPM lets you hide outdated packages from your users to discourage their use.
  • VI Package Validation — VIPM calculates a cryptographic hash for every package, which allows users to verify that they have the official released version of a package for traceability purposes.
  • much more…

I’ll be going over these features (and other VIPM 3.0 features) in future articles, so stay tuned.

If you haven’t downloaded VIPM 3.0 already, what are you waiting for?  Get it now!

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JKI Releases VI Package Manager 3.0 with Enterprise Package Repositories

by JKI on October 2, 2009 in Company News, VIPM | 1 comment

JKI is very excited to announce the availability of VI Package Manager 3.0 with Enterprise Package Sharing. This release allows you to take share your reusable VIs over the network with your team, via a centralized VI Package Repository.

VI Package Manager™ allows you to get your reusable LabVIEW VIs into the palettes, organized the way you want, in just minutes. It has powerful, easy-to-use features that make sure you’re always in control of your reusable VIs, without the worry of missing subVIs in your LabVIEW projects.  And, it allows you to share your reusable VIs with your entire team, over the network.

vi-package-builder-drag-and-drop

Want to hear what others are saying about VI Package Manager? See our Customer Quotes.

VIPM Community

  • Install VI Packages
  • Download free OpenG VIs
  • Keyword search for VIs

VIPM Professional - In addition to all the features available in VIPM Community, VIPM Professional offers the following additional features:

  • Create VI Packages
  • Configuration Management of Projects
  • Source Code Control  Integration

VIPM Enterprise – In addition to all the features available in VIPM Professional, VIPM Enterprise offers the following additional features:

  • Network Package Sharing
  • Team-based code reuse
  • User Management

You can learn more about VIPM 3.0, as well as download it on the Web at: jkisoft.com/vipm

We’re very proud of this release and hope you find that it’s full of great new features that help you in your LabVIEW projects. Thank you for all your feedback and support.

New VIPM Video Explains Features and Concepts

by Jim Kring on July 31, 2009 in VIPM | No comments

We’ve created a new video (below) for the VIPM product homepage to help explain the features and concepts behind VIPM, including the Professional and Enterprise (coming soon) editions of the product.  We’re really happy with how it came out and hope you like it, too.

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Creating a State Diagram from the JKI State Machine with the Endevo UML Tool (video)

by JKI on July 30, 2009 in Events, JKI Software Products, JKI State Machine, LabVIEW, TortoiseSVN | 9 comments

Since we released the JKI State Machine a few months ago, lots of people have been using it to build powerful, maintainable software in LabVIEW™.  But did you know that the JKI State Machine can also be combined with other tools, to make it even more powerful?

The engineers at Endevo have put together a great video that shows how to use their UML Modeller with the JKI State Machine:

Click here to watch it.

And don’t forget, the JKI State Machine is a free tool from JKI Software.  You can always learn more about it at jkisoft.com, or install it in just a few clicks using VI Package Manager™.

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