Patent ID: 7831680

Claim:
A system comprising: a first computer system configured to couple to a network; a second computer system configured to couple to the network; wherein the first computer system is configured with program instructions that are executable to configure a first graphical program to write to a first variable, wherein the first graphical program comprises a first plurality of interconnected nodes that visually represent functionality of the first graphical program, and wherein the first plurality of interconnected nodes comprises a first variable node corresponding to the first variable; wherein the second computer system is configured with program instructions that are executable to configure a second graphical program to read from the first variable, wherein the second graphical program comprises a second plurality of interconnected nodes that visually represent functionality of the second graphical program, and wherein the second plurality of interconnected nodes comprises a second variable node corresponding to the first variable; wherein the first computer system is further configured to execute the first graphical program, wherein the first graphical program is configured to write data to the first variable during execution by providing the data as input to the first variable node; wherein the data written to the first variable are delivered to the second computer system over the network in a time-deterministic manner; wherein the second computer system is further configured to execute the second graphical program, wherein the second graphical program is configured to read the data from the first variable during execution by reading the data as output from the second variable node.