FireWire Summary
NI-VISA provides a convenient means of accessing low-level functionality of FireWire devices. The alternative to using NI-VISA for FireWire device communication is writing a kernel driver or using an existing kernel driver supplied by the vendor. By using NI-VISA, you avoid having to learn how to write kernel drivers, avoid having to learn a different kernel model for each operating system, and gain platform independence and portability by scaling to other operating systems in the future.