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The NI ecosystem delivers increased productivity to customers through third party software and hardware, integrators and service partners, and a vast community of certified developers.
Figure 1. The NI Ecosystem
This strong and flexible ecosystem extends the capabilities of the NI platform by providing customers with products, partners, and expertise to help drive innovation.
LabVIEW Tools Network
The LabVIEW Tools Network offers a single location to search, browse, and purchase NI and third-party add-ons and apps. These products make you more successful by expanding the power of the NI platform. Each product is certified Compatible with LabVIEW, demonstrating that it is field tested and integrates well with NI software and hardware products. Add-ons and apps range from general-purpose tools to highly specialized products built by industry experts. You can read reviews and view user product ratings.
Figure 2. The LabVIEW Tools Network (ni.com/labviewtools)
The LabVIEW Tools Network is integrated directly into the LabVIEW development environment. Using VI Package Manager, you can browse, manage, and evaluate add-ons without closing the development environment.
Figure 3. The LabVIEW Tools Network integrated into LabVIEW
Learn more about the LabVIEW Tools Network.
User Community
Alliance Partner Network
The NI Alliance Partner Network is a program of more than 700 accredited companies worldwide that provide engineers with complete solutions and high-quality products based on graphical system design.
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Figure 4. The Alliance Partner Network (ni.com/alliance)
Since the program’s inception in the early ‘90s, NI Alliance Partners have evolved into a global network of companies that offer system integration services, add-on products to NI software and hardware and turnkey solutions for companies spanning multiple industry and application areas. From products and systems to integration, consulting, and training services, Alliance Partners are uniquely equipped and skilled to help you meet some of the toughest engineering challenges.
Learn more about the Alliance Partner Network.
Certified Users
The NI Community boasts a healthy network of over 10,000 certified developers world-wide. With six different certification exams that test basic to advanced proficiency with LabVIEW, NI LabWindows™/CVI, and NI TestStand, developers and engineers can demonstrate the skills they need to create high-quality applications with NI software platforms and give customers, peers, and employers confidence in their abilities.
Certified developers have many opportunities to network with fellow technology leaders and engage in peer-to-peer discussions online and at events. Through private online forums like the Certified LabVIEW Architects community, certified developers can collaborate with peers and share best practices, common struggles, unique solutions, and favorite tools. Developers can connect at bi-quarterly LabVIEW Virtual User Group meetings segmented by certification level and during an annual roundtable lunch at NIWeek. Many certified users also obtain access to product previews, R&D roadmaps, and NI technical and business leaders. For LabVIEW Architects, NI holds a yearly summit for networking, sharing best practices, and interacting with members of LabVIEW R&D.
Learn more about NI Training and Certification.
Connectivity
Figure 5. Graphical System Design
National Instruments provides an extensible platform that you can use to integrate software and hardware. This helps you get up and running faster, so you can spend time using your application rather than developing it.
Instrument Driver Network
The NI Instrument Driver Network (IDNet) is the industry's largest online collection of free, instrument-specific, open source instrument drivers for communicating with third-party instruments in LabVIEW, LabWindows/CVI, and Microsoft Visual Studio.
With instrument drivers from IDNet, you can interface with a wide variety of instruments for any application. They are built by National Instruments, device manufacturers, instrument vendors, NI partners, and other third parties. Certified instrument drivers comply with instrument driver standards including programming style, error handling, documentation, and functional testing to ensure quality results.
Learn more about the Instrument Driver Network.
Interoperability
LabVIEW operates with many other programming languages including .NET, C, and MathScript. In addition, built-in LabVIEW functionality, software add-ons, and drivers from IDNet connect you to virtually any platform over any bus or protocol. With this extensibility, you can build new systems that integrate easily into existing installations.
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This tutorial (this "tutorial") was developed by National Instruments ("NI"). Although technical support of this tutorial may be made available by National Instruments, the content in this tutorial may not be completely tested and verified, and NI does not guarantee its quality in any way or that NI will continue to support this content with each new revision of related products and drivers. THIS TUTORIAL IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND AND SUBJECT TO CERTAIN RESTRICTIONS AS MORE SPECIFICALLY SET FORTH IN NI.COM'S TERMS OF USE (http://ni.com/legal/termsofuse/unitedstates/us/).