LabWindows/CVI (C for Virtual Instrumentation) is a text-based programming environment that provides engineers with a set of tools for instrument control, automated test, and data acquisition. Unlike the graphical approach of NI LabVIEW, LabWindows/CVI is built for software engineers who prefer linear, text-based languages like C.
There were compromises. The team needed long-term reproducibility; they insisted on saving experiment versions alongside code revisions and instrument firmware. They kept the 90RAR archive—unchanged—so they could always reconstruct the exact environment of early experiments. The archive became a canonical snapshot whenever results were disputed.
Released in late 2008, version 9.0 introduced several performance and language enhancements: