Using DataFinder with text oir csv Files

[dannyt]

Hi,

 

I have heard several times how useful the Datafinder Toolkit can be and wanted to have a play with it.

 

These seems not a great deal of information to be found generally regarding this toolkit and even less on how to get started if using *.csv files or text files.

 

I have played with the examples and read what I can but I do not seem to be making much progress. Does anybody have a  simple example or extra info to help get me going.

 

cheers

 

Danny

[hooovahh]

I'm not a DataFinder expert so what I say may not be accurate.  DataFinder does not index the values of signals.  At least with TDMS data you cannot perform a search on if a channel has a value that is in some range.  You can only perform searches on the properties of the data.  In TDMS this is easy because the file, groups, and channels have properties and searching based on if a property of a file is in range is easy.

 

I assume for DataFinder to index the properties of a CSV file you must write a data plugin which allows DataFinder to know what properties are.  Let say your first row of a CSV is property names, and the second row is the values.  This is something that DataFinder just can't know without you telling it and you do that by making your own plugin.  I've never made a plugin and wouldn't know where to start but my guess is this is the only way for DataFinder to allow you to find information on the file.

 

I think the only exception to this is the file name, path, and date.  This appears to be something that DataFinder infers without needing a custom plugin being made.

[JamesMc86]

Hey Danny,

As mentioned the data finder utilises data plugins to be able to understand file formats and schemas. Whilst csv defines the format you can still layout data in different ways internally so it needs a dataplugin to be able to understand your layout.

I think the easiest way to create one would be to download a trial of diadem. This has a wizard for creating dataplugins for text and cvs formats and I believe you should be able to do this with the eval and then continue to use the dataplugin from LabVIEW (though I've not tested this)

Cheers,

James

[dannyt]

Thanks for the replies, I am not sure now if I will be able to get any real use out of it for my application, however I will download the trial as you suggested James and see how it goes.

[ShaunR]

Thanks for the replies, I am not sure now if I will be able to get any real use out of it for my application, however I will download the trial as you suggested James and see how it goes.

 

I've never used "Data Finder" but I just load csv files into a SQLite DB. The SQLite API for LabVIEW has a VI to do this for you, but you can do it yourself and once in there, it just boils down to how you want to view the info using queries.