Tool mixes graphical, syntactical programming in Visual Basic

-- EDN, 2/17/2000

Today, data acquisition; tomorrow, who knows? ComputerBoards says that its $495 SoftWire graphical-programming package can revolutionize application development not only on the company's home turf-data acquisition-but also in many other areas (Picture). For now, SoftWire works with Microsoft's (www.microsoft.com) Visual Basic 6.0. However, ComputerBoards expects that it will soon expand support to Visual C++ and other programming packages that use Microsoft's ActiveX/component-object-model (COM) technology.

According to ComputerBoards, graphical programming, despite its popularity, is a mixed blessing. If software development isn't your forte, graphical programming lets you easily and rapidly develop small applications. But development effort and time can easily get out of hand as application complexity grows. Moreover, experience isn't particularly helpful in limiting the required effort. Learning how to program in traditional text-based languages takes longer, but experience is more helpful. With syntactical languages, lessons you learned on past projects exert greater impact on the current job, says ComputerBoards. SoftWire simplifies programming at all levels by enabling developers to mix graphical and syntactical programming within an application, using each where it is most appropriate.

SoftWire includes more than 100 objects for controlling and reading from data-acquisition boards and manipulating and displaying data. You use these objects to create your graphical programs. ComputerBoards has also developed routines for controlling IEEE 488 instruments. Because you use SoftWire from within the Visual Basic development environment, you can easily create custom functions. Double-click on the custom-function object after you've dropped it into your graphical program, and a Visual Basic-syntax window automatically opens.

ComputerBoards Inc, 1-508-946-9500, www.computerboards.com.

-by Dan Strassberg