| Seven different laboratory-specific data acquisition and control products were applied to projects in chemistry and chemical engineering laboratories. The software products used in this study were National Instruments LabVIEW 2, Hewlett-Packard (HP) Rocky Mountain BASIC, TransEra HTBasic, Hewlett-Packard Instrument BASIC for Windows, Microsoft QuickBASIC, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) MINC BASIC and DEC VAXLab BASIC. These applications were run on various computer platforms (Apple Macintosh, HP Workstation, IBM PC, DEC PDP 11/23 and DEC MicroVAX). They were evaluated on the basis of the following themes: order of execution (sequence versus data flow); interpreted versus compiled code; graphical versus text user and programming interfaces; multitasking versus single-tasking operating systems; program development environment, specialized libraries; interfacing capabilities; porting ability/interoperability; availability of third-party products; networking features and stylistic flexibility. The more recent products focus on graphical user interfaces and interoperability but some still have weak interfacing capabilities. |
