Technical data

Glossary 8
Agilent Connectivity Guide 213
to announce its presence on the network to other devices. UPnP
devices use Extensible Markup Language (XML) to establish a
common language, or “protocol negotiation”, to talk to each other
and determine capabilities.
VEE
The Agilent Visual Engineering Environment, which is software
used for I/O application programming.
virtual instrument
A name given to the grouping of software modules (such as VISA
resources with any associated or required hardware) to give them the
functionality of a traditional stand-alone instrument. Within VISA, a
virtual instrument is the logical grouping of any of the VISA
resources. The VISA Instrument Control Resources Organizer serves
as a means to group any number of any type of VISA Instrument
Control Resources within a VISA system.
VISA
The Agilent Virtual Instrument Software Architecture library, which
is software used for I/O application programming. Agilent VISA is
part of the IO Libraries Suite product.
VISA address
A resource descriptor that can be used to open a VISA session.
VISA alias
A string that can be used instead of a resource descriptor in VISA
programs. Using VISA aliases rather than hard-coded resource
descriptors makes your programs more portable. You can define
VISA aliases for your instruments in Connection Expert.
VISA COM
The VXIplug&play specification for a COM-compliant VISA I/O
library and its implementation. Agilent VISA COM is part of the
Agilent IO Libraries Suite.