Instrument interfacing in the client-server world

LabStation is a general purpose instrument integration and laboratory automation CASE tool. It provides a total operating and development environment on top of the PC´s operating system. LabStation is unique as an instrument interfacing tool as it provides a total solution to the problem of acquiring data from instruments and transferring it to a LIMS. Unlike most PC based systems that can only acquire data from a single instrument, LabStation can control and acquire data from a number of instruments concurrently. It can also perform background communication with a LIMS running on a remote host. LabStation is multitasking and event driven. In order to accomplish these programming objectives, LabStation uses the object orientated programming paradigm. The author introduces the LabStation environment, provides details on the usage of the standard system, and gives details of the various data acquisition methods that are possible