New .NET Driver Shared Components

15 May 2025 - IVI Admin

The IVI Foundation has just released new shared components for developing instrument drivers consistent with the recently announced new IVI Driver Standards. The components facilitate implementing Microsoft .NET IVI Conformant instrument drivers and support both .NET 6+ and .NET Framework. The new shared components are:

The IVI Driver Shared Components (DSC) for new IVI Core Drivers
The IVI Driver Configurable Settings Shared Components (CSSC) for drivers that are based on IVI Generation 2014

The new IVI Standards align the IVI driver standards with common customer expectations around driver capability, while retaining the IVI Requirements for:

Testing - to ensure high quality drivers
Documentation - to ensure that driver users have access to documentation necessary to successfully use the driver
Source code - to enable customers to update and enhance drivers on their own

The IVI DSC Shared Components

The IVI DSC shared component contains a simple interface that is implemented by all IVI .NET Core drivers that has methods for:

Driver initialization and reset
Instrument error check
Driver vendor
Driver version
Instrument Model Connected, and supported instrument models
Driver simulation control

The IVI CSSC Shared Components

The IVI CSSC shared components are similar to the existing shared components, but also support .NET 6+ drivers. As such, they support the instrument class definitions and various IVI utility functions. This includes the ability to draw instrument and application configuration from a system-wide IVI configuration store.

More Information

To see the new IVI Core specifications see:

For details on the IVI CSSC and how driver developers and users can utilize them, see Configurable Settings Shared Components

All IVI specifications are also available on the IVI website.

Additional information on IVI Driver Generation, see IVI Generation 2026