Thursday, 2:15 PM in Rangos I.
A dynamic data display system using CGI and server push techniques has
been developed for the 2m x 3m Low Speed Wind Tunnel at the Aerodynamics
Laboratory of the Institute for Aerospace Research, National Research Council
of Canada. The data acquisition environment, in which the system
runs, dictated two fundamental design criteria. The first requirement was
the need to simultaneously provide the users of several PCs and Unix workstations
with a columnar text data display that could be updated dynamically and
also retain a specified number of updates for comparative purposes.
The second requirement was the need to accept asynchronous data from reporting
processes on multiple remote computers. An additional design consideration
was the adoption by the software development staff at the Aerodynamics
Laboratory of a general policy of using open standards and open-source
software wherever possible. By using Perl to implement traditional
client-server methods for gathering, processing and distributing the data
to be displayed, and by using CGI.pm to implement the user interface, a
simple, robust and platform-independent system has been created that meets
the design criteria and also provides additional functionality. This
paper is intended to provide an overall description of the display system
and its operating environment, as well as specific details of the design
and implementation.
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