What is a Worker?

What is a Worker?

A Worker is the name for a modular QMH in the framework. This is the simple definition of a Worker.

In LVOOP terms, a Worker is a QMH and its supporting code that is encapsulated in a class, which inherits from the ultimate parent class of all Workers: Worker.lvclass.

Good to know

For developers without LVOOP experience, you can simply think of a Worker's class as a library with its own data-type.

As with a regular QMH, you assign your Workers a specific task, e.g. as a user interface or data logger, etc., but because a Worker is modular, you can easily reuse your Workers again in multiple projects, or even use multiple instances of them within the same application.

Visual representation of a Worker, showing a class (the blue cube) that contains a QMH and its supporting code

Worker Contents

You can create new Workers and add them to your LabVIEW projects, using the Create/Add Worker tool. A new Worker created by the tool contains only four items, as shown below.

A new Worker contains only these four items.

New Worker.lvclass

This is the Worker itself: a class that contains your Worker's methods and data, ie. VIs and ctls. For those who are not familiar with classes, you can simply think of a class as a library that has its own data type.

New Worker.ctl

This is a cluster of data that is private to the Worker. Here you can add any data types that you wish to store data between MHL iterations within the QMHs shift-register.

Initialization.ctl

This is a cluster of data that is used to pass data into the Worker's QMH when the Worker is initialized.

Main.vi

This VI is referred to as a Workers Main VI and contains the QMH of the Worker (see The Workers Main VI). This VI is a reentrant shared-clone.