National Instruments NI LabView Unit Test Framework and LabView Desktop Execution Trace toolkits are software engineering tools for the LabView graphical development environment.

Also released is the NI Requirements Gateway 1.1 requirements management software.When developing large-scale or complex applications with LabView software, engineers can use these toolkits to help validate systems, improve software quality and test code against requirements.

As the complexity and sophistication of software increase, more regimented and automated procedures are needed to ensure thorough testing and help with code validation. The LabVIEW Unit Test Framework and LabView Desktop Execution Trace toolkits are designed to automate and improve common software engineering tasks.

With the LabView Unit Test Framework Toolkit, engineers can automate requirements-based testing and the validation of VIs developed in LabView. Automating this process reduces the amount of time developers spend performing tests and enables more exhaustive testing.

The LabView Unit Test Framework Toolkit also integrates with NI Requirements Gateway to help engineers manage requirements documents for software testing, track the amount of coverage and understand the impact of changes.

The LabView Desktop Execution Trace Toolkit is a dynamic code analyser that engineers can use during run time to detect and locate problems in code that could impact performance or cause unexpected behaviour. It shows a chronological view of events, queue operations, reference leaks, memory allocation, unhandled errors and subVI execution. 

Other LabViews toolkits an be used to enhance software testing. The LabView VI Analyser Toolkit performs static analysis of VIs to improve code style and readability as well as increase performance and usability. Also, the NI Real-Time Execution Trace Toolkit helps engineers gather low-level information about the execution of LabView code on a real-time target.

With NI Requirements Gateway 1.1, engineers can improve the quality and efficiency of their new test system and product designs by conducting requirements traceability from documentation to implementation in National Instruments software. With the new version, engineers can map requirements to objects on LabView block diagrams as well as the contents of LabView Project files.

More information www.ni.com/softwareengineering