Unable to Probe Messenger Channels!!!

[Bob_Schor]

Today, RussellB posted some questions about Messenger Channels, and I replied to two of the points he raised.  His last point was about Probes, which I'd never used with these channels.

About an hour later, while trying to debug some strange Messenger Channel behavior in code I was developing, I "remembered" that I could simply Probe the Channel and see what was happening.

NOT!!  My Project used a Channel Message Handler (think Queued Message Handler, but with Channels), and if I right-clicked a Messenger Channel "wire" (pipe), "Probe" was greyed out.  As it happened, I also had a Producer/Consumer pair of loops connected by a Stream Channel -- here the Probe option seemed to be viable (at least it wasn't greyed out).

OK, it's probably something funky in my code.  So I call NI, get a helpful AE on the phone, describe my problem, then we both try creating Messenger Channels.  When we create them with Clusters (I used the Error Cluster) or Numerics, and make a Writer-Reader pair, the Channel cannot be probed (right-click, Probe is greyed out).

So we turn to the LabVIEW Examples, finding two of them (Channel - Messenger.lvprog and Channel Message Handler.lvproj).  For both of them, Probe seems to work!  But then I notice that the contents of the Messenger is a Class -- could that be significant?  Well, if I disconnect the Writer's Class/Object input and connect, instead, a Numeric, do Adapt to Input (or whatever it is called) and also make the Reader consistent, Probe again greys out.

Is this a Bug or a Feature?  Other Channels (I've only really looked at Streams) seem to be "Probe"-able, even with simple types.  Why not Messenger Channels?  Is there a WorkAround?

Bob "Bug-Finder" Schor

P.S. -- the AE and I were both running our tests with LabVIEW 2016 on Windows 7.  I don't think it will make any difference (why should it?), but I'll test on Windows 10 at home this evening.

[Bob_Schor]

I just got the announcement of the f1 release of LabVIEW 2016 and the announcement that a new Event Messenger Channel is now available for testing.  It occurred to me to test whether the Feature Bug in being unable to Probe Messenger Channels of "ordinary Data types" had been fixed -- as the young lady in the (I think Nationwide) Auto Insurance ad says -- "No!" (think very high voice, very short utterance).

The Good News, however, is that you can probe the new Event Messenger channel.

Bob Schor