Distributed visual programming environment: Applications within data-acquisition

Visual programming is rapidly gaining recognition as a valuable tool for software development. A number of problems however remain to be solved, among them the versatility of the environment and the possibility for distributed execution. The authors describe work on data flow based visual programming environment which explores solutions to these problems. Some features of the environment are illustrated with a data-acquisition example. An application in the environment is described which can be seen as an example of a virtual instrument