What’s new in VIPM 3.0?

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?“

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!

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.

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.

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!

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!