Specifications

8
interchangeability but may not provide behavioral interchangeability. In other
words, the program may run on two different instruments but the results may
not be the same due to differences in the way the instrument itself functions.
Flavors of IVI Drivers
To support all popular programming languages and development environments, IVI
drivers provide either an IVI-C or IVI-COM (Component Object Model) API. Driver
developers may provide either or both interfaces, as well as wrapper interfaces
optimized for specific development environments.
Although the functionality is the same, IVI-C drivers are optimized for use in ANSI
C development environments; IVI-COM drivers are optimized for environments
that support the
Component Object Model (COM). IVI-C drivers extend the
VXIplug&play driver specification and their usage is similar. IVI-COM drivers
provide easy access to instrument functionality through methods and properties.
All IVI drivers communicate to the instrument through an I/O Library. Our examples
use the Virtual Instrument Software Architecture (VISA), a widely used standard
library for communicating with instruments from a personal computer.
Shared Components
To make it easier for you to combine drivers and other software from various
vendors, the IVI Foundation members have cooperated to provide common
software components, called IVI Shared Components. These components provide
services to drivers and driver clients that need to be common to all drivers. For
instance, the IVI Configuration Server enables administration of system-wide
configuration.
Important! You must install the IVI Shared Components before an IVI driver
can be installed.
The IVI Shared Components can be downloaded from vendors’ web sites as well
as from the IVI Foundation Web site.
To download and install shared components from the IVI Foundation Web site:
1 Go to the IVI Foundation Web site at http://www.ivifoundation.org.
2 Locate Shared Components.
3 Choose the IVI Shared Components msi file for the Microsoft Windows Installer
package or the IVI Shared Components exe for the executable installer.
Download and Install IVI Drivers
After you’ve installed Shared Components, you’re ready to download and install an
IVI driver. For most ADEs, the steps to download and install an IVI driver are
identical. For the few that require a different process, the relevant
Getting Started
with IVI Drivers
guide provides the information you need.