[wplug] OT - Programming Languages

[J Aaron Farr]

--- Chris <vze2f6h6 at verizon.net> wrote:
> > 
> > > web-based, and then the client side doesn't matter.  The only problem is
> > > that the browser would have to refresh at least every minute to show the
> > > updated time for all the tanning beds.
> > 
> > Why is a browser refresh a problem?  You don't want to tax the server?
> > 
> 
> I really don't think taxing the server would be a problem.  Unless there
> were many machines connected to it.  This would be in an intranet setting.
> I couldn't image more then about 5 machines total.  I think that biggest
> problems would be when people are trying to type and lose their data.  Plus
> it would get a little annoying seeing the page constantly refreshing.  Say
> it was controlling 10 beds.  That means that the browser would have to
> refresh about 5 - 10 times per minute.  I guess that's a function of how
> accurate the display would be.  I think that it would be much cleaner
> without the refreshing.  If this turns out to be an app that they can use
> over the Internet to connect other salons, then that could be a lot of data
> refreshing.
> 
> Thanks for all the help everyone.  I have a lot of research to do.
> 
> Chris Romano 
> 

Several Thoughts:

Refreshing:
   If you do go web based, you can get by the refresh by having the refresh
part in a seperate frame.  Not very elegant if you ask me, but it works.

Language:
   I'm biased (as is everyone else), but I do a lot Java programming.  There is
good serial/parallel communication support in Java [1][2] (I've used it), but
USB support will be tricky.  There's at least one open source library for java
+ USB [3], but I believe it only works on Linux.  Official support should be
added soon [4], but that doesn't help you now.  There may be commerical
packages, but I'm not familiar with any.
   Of course, the advantage with Java is that you can also just add a small
interface to the platform specific API using Java Native Interface (JNI)[5]. 
With a little proper coding this should allow you to switch OS's without too
much trouble.

If you have any specific java questions for this project, send me an email.

Good luck.
jaaron

[1] http://java.sun.com/products/javacomm/
[2] http://www.rxtx.org/
[3] http://jusb.sourceforge.net/
[4] http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=80
[5] http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/jni/

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