National Instruments Measurement Studio 8.6 Offers Complete Support for Visual Studio 2008

New Version of Software Provides Data Acquisition and Instrument Control Libraries and Tools for Latest Release of .NET and C++

AUSTIN, Texas, Dec. 1, 2008 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — National Instruments (Nasdaq: NATI) today announced Measurement Studio 8.6, which increases test and measurement functionality for Visual Studio 2008, the latest Microsoft development environment. Measurement Studio 8.6 features the industry’s first complete set of .NET and C++ class libraries, tools and data acquisition and instrument control driver support for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC) 9.0 and the .NET Framework 3.5. Engineers using .NET also can use Measurement Studio 8.6 to support applications with select modular instruments by building benchmark applications in Visual Studio 2008. Measurement Studio 8.6 simplifies the task of connecting to and communicating with a wide variety of instruments. With the Measurement Studio interface, engineers can acquire data quickly from GPIB, USB, serial, Ethernet, PXI and VXI instruments using the built-in instrument I/O libraries or using built-in instrument drivers.

With Measurement Studio 8.6, .NET developers have the added advantage of the Technical Data Management Streaming (TDMS) .NET API that provides an efficient method to describe and store measurement data that is optimized for high-speed data streaming and postprocessing. With the TDMS file format, engineers easily can store properties and organize data hierarchically within a test file and quickly capture, display and stream several channels of data from devices. The TDMS data model removes the burden of designing and maintaining custom file formats, and these files also can be accessed and modified easily in Visual Studio with Measurement Studio or in other analysis environments such as NI LabVIEW, LabWindows(TM)/CVI and DIAdem or in spreadsheet environments such as Microsoft Excel.

“In the past, we spent a lengthy, costly amount of time at a research center processing data after it was collected,” said Larry Roy, vice president of Embedded Logix Inc. “Using the Measurement Studio .NET class libraries with TDMS file support to store our complex data, we can easily perform data analysis within minutes of running a trial. We went from a concept to a working prototype in less than one month.”

Measurement Studio works with NI data acquisition (DAQ) hardware such as NI USB DAQ, Wi-Fi DAQ, Ethernet-based and PCI Express devices by providing a high-level interface for data acquisition applications. Engineers can take advantage of built-in channel configurations for scaling raw data, high-speed waveform acquisition and generation and accurate single-point analog and digital I/O. They also can use pulse generation, event counting and duration measurements with a counter/timer I/O in Measurement Studio 8.6. These I/O capabilities, combined with special data types and measurement analysis class libraries, are specifically designed to obtain the data or measurement needed from physical sensors efficiently.

For more information, readers can visit www.ni.com/mstudio.

About National Instruments

National Instruments (www.ni.com) is transforming the way engineers and scientists design, prototype and deploy systems for measurement, automation and embedded applications. NI empowers customers with off-the-shelf software such as NI LabVIEW and modular cost-effective hardware and sells to a broad base of more than 25,000 different companies worldwide, with no one customer representing more than 3 percent of revenue and no one industry representing more than 10 percent of revenue. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more than 5,000 employees and direct operations in more than 40 countries. For the past nine years, FORTUNE magazine has named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America. Readers can obtain investment information from the company’s investor relations department by calling (512) 683-5090, e-mailing nati@ni.com or visiting www.ni.com/nati.

    Pricing and Contact Information
    National Instruments Measurement Studio 8.6     11500 N Mopac Expwy,
    Priced from $499; euro 499; 74,000 yen          Austin, Texas 78759-3504
                                                    Tel: (800) 258-7022,
                                                    Fax: (512) 683-9300

    Web: www.ni.com/mstudio                         E-mail: info@ni.com

CVI, DIAdem, Measurement Studio, LabVIEW, National Instruments, NI and ni.com are trademarks of National Instruments. The mark LabWindows is used under a license from Microsoft Corporation. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries. Other product and company names listed are trademarks or trade names of their respective companies.

    Editor Contact:  Julia Betts, (512) 683-8165
    Reader Contact:  Ernest Martinez, (800) 258-7022

SOURCE National Instruments