DIAdem Opinions/Drawbacks?

[Chris Leyen]

Hello,

This post takes me off of the One hit wonder label, so it is certainly fair to say I am new to this site.

I am looking for opinions regarding DIAdem.

The general consensus I get so far is that it is used a lot outside of the states, but that in the states, Office seems to lead people away from it.

(One of our customers is interested in using it.)

My initial look at it seems to suggest that it has a lot of functionality, but this seems to be a good place draw opinions from more experienced individuals.

So DIAdem? Whaddaya think?

Or more specifically, what would your reasons be for NOT using DIAdem?

(apologies if this is a "cross-post", I am a newbie to the blogging thing, too)

Cheers!

[Omar Mussa]

QUOTE (c.LEyen @ Jan 7 2009, 01:05 PM)

So DIAdem? Whaddaya think?

Or more specifically, what would your reasons be for NOT using DIAdem?

What is your use case? What are you trying to achieve? DIAdem is a tool so whether to use the tool depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

[Chris Leyen]

QUOTE (Omar Mussa @ Jan 7 2009, 03:44 PM)

What is your use case? What are you trying to achieve? DIAdem is a tool so whether to use the tool depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

I am accustomed to using ascii files and analyzing data in excel and/or using the Report Generation Toolkit. DIAdem is new to me.

I was looking at DIAdem thinking about post test analysis routines and automated Reports. I know that is still general for use cases, but really I was just looking for general opinions regarding DIAdem use.

Maybe, when would you use DIAdem and when would you not?

[Omar Mussa]

QUOTE (c.LEyen @ Jan 7 2009, 02:27 PM)

Maybe, when would you use DIAdem and when would you not?

First, I will qualify that I haven't used DIAdem 11, so I'm not sure exactly how the latest version applies to these comments but I believe they are valid (my last project was in DIAdem 9, I did take a look at DIAdem 10 but did not have any projects). I will only point out what I think are DIAdem's strengths for now since I don't really know enough about your project. Hopefully this will help, I recommend you use the demo version and see for yourself what kind of time investment it will take and whether that is worth it for you.

DIAdem works well if you have a lot of different sources of data (ascii, excel, database, etc) and need to aggregate them together.

DIAdem works well if you can have at least 1 person become 'the expert' on your team. There is (in my opinion) a fairly significant learning curve to become a DIAdem expert - so unless you have the resources to make someone and expert, it may not be worth the effort. The expert should have a good understanding of the data formats you want to support, VB/vbscript, LabVIEW (optional actually but can be useful), and ActiveX, esp. w.r.t. generating MS Office reports. It may be worth your while to get consulting help on setting up your initial architecture if you plan on doing complex reporting.

DIAdem works great if your data is 'compatible' - meaning that the built in tools can parse your data easily -- this is not necessarily the case for complex relational databases which generally require customization on your part to get the data in how you want to see it. If your data is not 'compatible' -- for example if it is a custom binary format, you can create a 'Data Plug-in' pretty easily that makes it easy to import your binary data.

DIAdem does have a lot of really cool tools for engineering data analysis.

DIAdem and LabVIEW can interact - if you are comfortable in LabVIEW, I would recommend doing all of the GUIs in LabVIEW and having some kind of 'report engine' that you can call that implements any DIAdem vbs required for report generation.

Good luck!