Database Access

Database Access means to connect to a Database (better Database_Management_System and the related set of data) and store, retrieve or otherwise manage data.

There are different ways to access databases from LabVIEW.

• National Instruments (NI) provides the Database Connectivity Toolset as an Add-On to LabVIEW. This is a set of tools to access local and remotes Databases and to operate them with or without structured query language (SQL) programming.
  

My personal impression was that this Toolset is way too complicated for just a single or very few projects.

• In the LabVIEW Technical Ressorce Volume 12, Number 3, Anthony Lukindo of Advanced Measurements Inc.published a paper named "Simplified LabVIEW Database Access: A Single VI Solution for Connecting, Reading and Writing to Your Database". This article was accompanied by a VI named "SQL Exe as LV2 Global.vi", which maintains all required data in [Shift Registers] and allows to perform allmost all database access by some simple calls to the above mentioned VI. If one knows some basics about SQL, this VI is IMHO much easier to use.

To use this tool one only needs an ODBC datasource file *.dsn to provide the database connection parameter. As this is ODBC-related, this VI is limitted to Windows only.

• ""T&M Solutions BV"" (www.tm-solutions.eu) provides a Free Database Connectivity Toolset as an Add-on for LabVIEW based on Express VI technology. This simplifies the usage by using a WYSIWYG interface to buildup your SQL code and VI structure. Also Binary Large OBjects (BLOB) are supported.