This is an application that we did for a full fledged pump test rig 2 years back, in VB6.0,with plenty of on line plotting, database facilities for test data and the like. The compiled EXE was just 5.2Mb.

The same machine; the same functionality; except that this time we did it in LabVIEW ( full graphical coding environment) and the compiled EXE is 48Mb.

My idea here is not to ridicule LabVIEW or say that it is inefficient. If for a moment you ignore the EXE file size, developing the code and interfacing it with the DAS hardware was a breeze. Full multi threading is native to the code - as a programmer you just have to make sure you don't goof it up! But talk of Global variables or Local variables and the LabVIEW community looks at you like you have just used a GoTo statement in C ! And most defenitley it is in no way a common platform as it is highly customized and will rake in revenues for the company producing it.

It is a new religion of programmers out there who want everything at the click of a mouse. And in full colour to drag and drop. No arguments there...

Raghu