South East Michigan LabVIEW User Group
NXG is NOT going away
So based on the announcement here we thought that all of NXG was going away or at least NXG as we know it but that does not appear to be the case based on a conversation I had with an NI employee about the future of the NXG Web Module.
My only experience with NXG is for the Web Module as a UI for a program running on a Raspberry Pi so I don't claim to have a complete understanding of what NXG as a whole is. My thought was that is you got rid of LabVIEW NXG then the whole "platform" would go away. The new NXG IDE would no longer be seen and as they stated in their announcement a couple things, like the Web Module, would get integrated into LabVIEW 2021 code base. This kind of encouraged me because I assumed I would be able to use the familiar LabVIEW classic IDE with the stand-alone Web Module and therefore would no longer required 2 independent projects as is currently required for the NXG Web Module.
Based on my conversation with the NI employee my experience with the NXG IDE and the requirement for 2 completely independent projects is not going to change one bit. In fact, for my use case where I only used NXG for the Web Module they are trying to make it feel like there is no difference with this transition.
How can that be? I thought NXG was going away? Well I went back-and-forth trying to understand this and here is the summary. I will also post my conversation for anyone who wants to ready the exact words.
First thing is the devil is in the details. They mention "LabVIEW NXG, based on the NXG Platform" and what I have determined is that the NXG IDE and LabVIEW NXG are independent and can exist without each. In this way items like the SystemDesigner and the Web Module can still exist with the exact same user experience without LabVIEW NXG.
So what does removing LabVIEW NXG from the NXG Platform going to actually do then? It is going to severely reduce the supported targets of the NXG Platform. Since Web Modules is staying around support for the Web Server target will still be supported but you will NOT be able to target others sources like a PC with this code. In NXG there is a new file type, .gvi, which I assumed is the equivalent of the .vi file type in LabVIEW classic. With the removal of LabVIEW NXG the .gvi file type is not going away. It will now only be able to be used on a Web Server instead of both on a Web Server and a PC as it is now. We all know that LabVIEW code is complied in the background and what it appears the removal of LabVIEW NXG is just removing the support to compile this code to run on different targets.
My initial thoughts about LabVIEW NXG going away where hopeful because I thought I was going to be able use the Web Module functionality with 1 project that shared all its code. Now with this new information I believe that I am worse off with LabVIEW NXG going away then I was when LabVIEW NXG existed. At least with the existence of LabVIEW NXG should have eventually been able to transition from LabVIEW classic to LabVIEW NXG and have 1 project for my application but now I will always have to have 2 completely independent projects.
What are your thoughts?
The initial conversation with the NI employee started on this post and I have attached the full conversation as a Word document.
My understanding is the NXG platform will still be developed. LabVIEW NXG is end of life this year. I don't know what the NXG platform means.
My attitude is wait and see. I personally am not investing time into the NXG platform until I am more comfortable in it's direction and implementation.
@ASTDan wrote:
My understanding is the NXG platform will still be developed. LabVIEW NXG is end of life this year. I don't know what the NXG platform means.
Right, and based on what I found out on the surface it will look like nothing changed. In fact in my use case, the Web Module, nothing will change.
@astrix wrote:EDIT: After doing a bit more digging, it seems G Web Development software has replaced NXG Web Module...Would maybe be good for NI to make this clear when looking at installing NXG Web Module
This is correct. Though, if you install the G Web Development software you will see it is exactly the same as the NXG Web Module.
