Current (LV2012) best way to serve data across platforms

[millonas]

I'm interested in hearing what people would regard as the current best way do the following:

I'd like to publish data from labview in a format that can be read over a network across platforms. The data should be not just be visible, but it should be fairly simple for someone writing their own code, say on a Unix machine, to integrate this data into their programs. Some more specific are probably in order. In its simplest form we would like to transfer a 1d array of doubles (say of length  30) plus an image file (say 600x400 pixel jpeg) and update about every 5 second. The "client" would just read this data in at need, and there is no requirement that the client be able to access data other than the current data cluster at the moment it read the data -  unread data is just thrown away when the next update arrives. Is a webservice the only/best way to do this at this time?

[ABCPrograms]

you might want to check Shared Variables (OPC)

A stupid thought maybe, but File IO is always a possiblity as well, might not be the best one, but will certainly work....

[johnsold]

A text file is probably the most universal. At a rate on once every five seconds this should be fine.  You might need to use two files in an alternating mode so that the client does not try to read a file while the server is writing to it.

Lynn