Vxipnp Drivers; Interchangeable Virtual Instruments (Ivi) Style Drivers - Keithley 708B Reference Manual

Models 707B and 708B Switching Matrix Reference Manual

VXIPnP drivers

VXI (Vixie) Plug-n-Play (VXIPnP) style drivers are Win32 DLLs that have some standard functions
defined by the VXIPnP Alliance, such as:
•
init
•
close
•
error_message
•
reset
•
self_test
•
Read
•
Initiate
•
Fetch
•
Abort
The API was defined so that users of instruments would have a familiar API from instrument to
instrument. There are some basic guidelines when creating APIs for your instrument, such as using
VISA data types and how to construct the CVI hierarchy. There are many VXIPnP drivers available for
Agilent, Fluke and Tektronix instruments.

Interchangeable Virtual Instruments (IVI) style drivers

The major problem with VXIPnP drivers was that the API was not specific to the instrument. For
something as standard as measuring DC Volts on a DMM, it would be a good idea if there were a set
of standard functions to do this.
The IVI Foundation
following instruments: DMM, Function Generator, DC Power Supply, Scope, Switch, Spectrum
Analyzer, RF Signal Generator and Power Meter. They are currently working on class APIs for some
other instrument types.
There are two types of IVI drivers: IVI-COM drivers use Microsoft COM technology to expose driver
functionality, while IVI-C drivers use conventional Windows DLLs to export simple C-based functions.
For more information about IVI drivers and the differences between the COM, C and .NET interfaces,
see Making the Case for IVI
(http://pacificmindworks.com/docs/Making%20the%20Case%20for%20IVI.pdf).
707B-901-01 Rev. A / August 2010
(http://www.ivifoundation.org) defined a set of APIs (Class interfaces) for the
Section 5: Remote commands
5-19