XVIML: an extensible virtual instrument markup language

In this paper, an assembling mechanism of virtual instrument and an extensible virtual instrument markup language are proposed. Using the Unix pipe mechanism, the virtual instrument application is separated into a group of pipeline components, which are connected together by pipelines. When the measurement data flow through connected pipeline components, the data are processed step by step until the end of pipelines. In the base of pipeline components, the assembling mechanism of virtual instrument is proposed. And a script language is proposed to define the assembling of virtual instrument. The language is created in the base of XML and is composed of XML tags that are used to describe the building interfaces of pipeline components. The language has an open XML structure. New pipeline components and their XML tags can be easily added to the language. To let the virtual instrument platform identify new XML tags automatically, a dynamic script interpreter is also proposed.