Polymorphic Analog Instrument Environment

This paper discusses the architecture of an environment for analog tests that is designed to work on a variety of hardware platforms. It employs a resource manager that understands the resources that are available and manages their allocation. The particular brand of instrument is not important, as long as the instrument contains the necessary capabilities. The Analog Instrument Environment contains instrument graphical user interfaces that morph to reflect the capabilities of the target hardware. There is a UI with a common look and feel that queries the hardware for its capabilities, and allows real time interaction with the hardware using the particular instrument's native nomenclature. The environment lets you define analog test steps consisting of a sequence of steps that control and read back results from the instrumentation available. You can run and debug the step, and you can generate the code necessary to run the steps in a Test Program Set (TPS).