Introduced as part of the DOC nGEN* supporting utilities, the Record and Playback (R&P) feature is available to all users of VAPS XT and can serve a multitude of purposes beyond the creation of documents.
Record Interactions
The first use of the R&P mechanism is to allow users to record interactions that are made with a display and play them back. This allows for the creation of a standalone application demo that can run without any user interaction; ideal for presentations or automated testing purposes.
Record Traffic and Commands
A second use of R&P is to record all incoming IO Buffer traffic (using nCOM** or any other communication mechanism) and ARINC 661 Runtime Commands and then play back these external messages without requiring the external data source to be present. This can enable, once again, the creation of fully standalone applications or to accelerate display testing, and can also help developers animate their designs during development without always needing to fire up their external simulation applications.
Object Documentation
Last but not least, as part of the upcoming DOC nGEN tool, R&P will be used to specify which objects should be documented at which points during the display execution. This will allow users to get information and snapshots of objects in a very specific set of conditions.
At a technical level, Record and Playback data can be generated and played back from the VAPS XT user interface through a new toolbar or by using command-line arguments on the Windows executables that are generated using the CODE nGEN. All of the recorded data is stored in XML files, just like all of the other design files created by VAPS XT.
If you want to see Record and Playback, along with other features of VAPS XT 2.3 and the upcoming VAPS XT 3.0, drop by our booth C21 at the Avionics Conference and Exhibition that will be held at the Passenger Terminal in Amsterdam's City Center on March 11th and 12th 2009.
*DOC nGEN - VAPS XT's automatic document generator
**nCOM - A communications protocol from Presagis
