So, what happened to the Extensible Session Framework (ESF)?

[DoctorAutomatic]

One day, many years ago, I ran across THIS TOPIC  announcing the Extensible Session Framework. I was intrigued, and my intrigue lead me to try it, and I liked it. The one big caveat was always the lifetime of the DVR. NI employees posted about a version 3.0 that was in the works and would solve this via an asynchronously launched daemon, if memory serves me right. But it's been radio silence for years now. I've DMed a few authors and not received any response (not sure they even work at NI anymore). Can anyone shed light on the status of ESF? I really found it useful in certain circumstances. 

"Doc, why don't you just roll your own instead of look to NI to continue the ESF?", you say. Well, I have learned over the years that it is best in 99% of all circumstances to utilize frameworks that are popular, public, and widely adopted as opposed to making bespoke solutions. You and I are unlikely to be the last developers of our applications, it is far better if NI is the author or maintainer of a framework versus little 'ol me.

[rolfk]

NI was very active in this domain between 2010 and 2016 and had lots of developers spending time on such things. Then things started to change and less and less activity was seen from the side of NI. With the exception of the AF maybe, which had a very strong promoter and supporter in the person of Aristos Queue, pretty much anything from NI that did not involve a paid toolkit, slowly and silently died off. And even for the paid products the continuous stream of new features turned into a smaller and smaller trickle as NI was preparing for the bold new future called NXG. Then two things happened, Corona and just barely before the announcement that NXG was dead. From that moment on there was pretty much radio silence on every front as far as NI was concerned. The main activity left was about releasing a new version of the LabVIEW software every year and because of their past decision to couple driver installers very tightly with application software versions, also having to rerelease Toolkits and Drivers every year, usually with no significant changes or even bug fixes, except the updated version dependency in the installer and a new version number. And some Toolkits or Drivers simply were considered to much hassle to do even that and were also left in limbo.

So has your ESF a lot of chance to be picked up again by NI? I have my serious doubts. It's likely what it is, unless someone in the community takes over and is willing to invest some efforts in this. Maybe it is a candidate for the new Open Source initiative that NI is currently looking into getting started. But even that is questionable. Open Source projects only work if there is enough community involvement. Without a strong advocate from the community for a specific project, it will fall into instant sleep the moment it is published.

[DoctorAutomatic]

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@rolfk wrote:

NI was very active in this domain between 2010 and 2016 and had lots of developers spending time on such things. Then things started to change and less and less activity was seen from the side of NI. With the exception of the AF maybe, which had a very strong promoter and supporter in the person of Aristos Queue, pretty much anything from NI that did not involve a paid toolkit, slowly and silently died off. And even for the paid products the continuous stream of new features turned into a smaller and smaller trickle as NI was preparing for the bold new future called NXG. Then two things happened, Corona and just barely before the announcement that NXG was dead. From that moment on there was pretty much radio silence on every front as far as NI was concerned. The main activity left was about releasing a new version of the LabVIEW software every year and because of their past decision to couple driver installers very tightly with application software versions, also having to rerelease Toolkits and Drivers every year, usually with no significant changes or even bug fixes, except the updated version dependency in the installer and a new version number. And some Toolkits or Drivers simply were considered to much hassle to do even that and were also left in limbo.

So has your ESF a lot of chance to be picked up again by NI? I have my serious doubts. It's likely what it is, unless someone in the community takes over and is willing to invest some efforts in this. Maybe it is a candidate for the new Open Source initiative that NI is currently looking into getting started. But even that is questionable. Open Source projects only work if there is enough community involvement. Without a strong advocate from the community for a specific project, it will fall into instant sleep the moment it is published.

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Well, that right there is - ummm... - unsettling, on many levels. ESF is/was a really unique/useful tool that certainly had its niche. It's less interesting to me without the official NI support/involvement/standardization for reasons I mentioned.

[rolfk]

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@DoctorAutomatic wrote:

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Well, that right there is - ummm... - unsettling, on many levels. ESF is/was a really unique/useful tool that certainly had its niche.

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You already say it yourself. It has a niche. Only really interesting for a few people apparently which makes it a poor candidate for any investments by NI. Unless someone from the community wants to pick it up and invest themselves in it, or some mega dollar corporation wants to settle on this as a standard, it will most likely simply sit there in the realms of digital history as an artifact for future informatic archeologists.