Over the last few years, we not only used DQMH very heavily, but we also started building additional features around the DQMH core. Since DQMH is widely customisable and extendable, it was straightforward to build an HSE-specific scripting extension for our own best practices. Thus, HSE-ify was born.
HSE DQMH Flavour
In order to adhere to the HSE DQMH Flavour, a module needs to implement particular helper VIs, broadcasts and requests. These generic functions allow an excellent integration of the module in our open-source Application Framework, which provides a fast and reliable starting point for any new project: Implement a project-specific UI layout, adjust the fancy splash screen with the customer’s colours and logo and customize the configuration for the navigation, and then you’re ready to start with the project-specific modules.
The Framework will automatically take care of: e.g. starting and registering a configurable list of modules dynamically, populating the navigation and the runtime menu automatically, and creating an event log for debugging.
With these extensions, we make our lives much easier, and hopefully our customers’ lives. And did we mention that they’re open-sourced?
DQMH Module Templates
Until now, implementation of the HSE DQMH Flavour needed some manual steps. Since it was impractical to repeat these manual steps, we created templates to solve this automatically for us. DQMH offers a very good developer experience. So when we start the development of a new module, we can easily create a vanilla DQMH module which has all the HSE DQMH Flavour already added.
As we all have experienced, one won’t always start on the green field. If creating a new module from our template was no option, e.g. because some legacy module from an older project needed to be taken over, we still needed to implement the HSE Flavour by hand.
And for new users of our libraries and templates, it’s even worse. Not only do they have lots of code to convert, but they are also not familiar with the HSE flavour yet. This can make the transition quite cumbersome!
The HSE-ify Scripting Tool
With the well-being of our customers and users in mind, we turned to the DQMH scripting ninjas to discuss possibilities. With them, we developed a scripting tool that converts existing DQMH modules to our HSE DQMH flavour efficiently and automatically.
This scripting tool is installed via VIPM. It integrates nicely with the other scripting options in the Tools – DQMH Consortium – DQMH menu. When invoked, it will first check that you’re working in a project that adheres to the HSE project structure, implements the HSE Application Template and contains all required dependencies. It then asks you to select which module to convert, and will hse-ify said module after clicking ok.
This new scripting tool also integrates very nicely with other tools in our HSE Way of Working collection. You can read about the details of our best practices over at our Dokuwiki site.
Where to get HSE-ify
The HSE-ify DQMH Tool is available for free via VIPM: