Client side programs are written in java or javascript. We can do your development in either language. There are technical tradeoffs that go into the decision of which is the best to use in a given situation.

For discussion purposes, I'm going to present of couple of case studies of applications that we have done. One application was in java and one in javascript.

The java application was a demonstration project for an embedded web server in a sawmill. The computer application in the mill determines the profile of a log by using a scanning system and then decides how to place various pieces of lumber in the log to maximize the return to the mill. It then positions the log in space so that as the log is sawn, those pieces are cut from the log.  A side effect of this maximization is that the amount of wasted wood fiber is minimized. Actually, wasted is a perhaps the wrong word. Mills operating in today's economic climate do not waste wood fiber. Wood fiber that is not turned into lumber is made into chips for paper.

It's very difficult in a high speed modern mill to decide if a given computer solution for a log is the best solution or even a reasonable solution. A small log can be processed in as little as two to three seconds.  Some logs require a dozen pages or more of paper output to describe why the solution that was chosen is the best one.  It's difficult to review the computer solutions in real time and a graphical representation is the only presentation of the data that can be reviewed in any reasonable amount of time.

But no matter what type(s) of graphical output a vendor provides, the operators and owners of a mill will at some point in time desire something different. Vendors do not like to create special versions of their control programs because any change creates the opportunity for an error to creep into the software. And a benign change for one mill might be viewed as as a serious bug in another mill. We put together a demonstration of a possible solution to this dilemma. An embedded web server running in the control application sends packets of the solution data information to a java program running in a browser window. A user can then select different or even multiple views of a particular log. If the mill were to want yet another style of data presentation, all they would have to do is change the java programming. The program in the control computer would not have to be changed and revalidated.  A simulation of our demo is here.  When you click on it, the java program will open three small windows on the screen. You can click on different buttons to display various parts of the solution data and pick various ways to display them.  We are not claiming that this is live data from a mill.  It is not connecting to a sawmill, but to a simulated server running a small java program on our web server. This server program gets historical log data from a data base and presents it to the browser.

The javascript application was for a mortgage broker. A friend of ours who is a marketing consultant came to us with a lot of notes, some partial web pages with some of them containing scrambled forms and tables, and some buggy javascript.

The javascript was used in two places. The first use was to create amortization schedules so borrowers could see the result of different interest rates, loan periods, and payment amounts. The second was to partially validate the information on a loan request form before it was transmitted to the loan broker. The marketing consultant cleaned up and organized the html web pages, we fixed the tables and input form, and then we fixed both javascript programs. The result was a simple but effective web site.

We did this about the time the avalanche of mortgage interest rate spam hit the Internet. The loan broker we did the site for got so frustrated about various issues related to the net that she decided she was going to expand one of her other businesses and let her mortgage business ride until things calmed down. We have created a copy of the site after removing the information that tied the site to its owner.

These are just two examples of client side programming. We have more real world solutions if you would like to discuss them. To initiate that discussion, send an email message to newservice@solid.net with a note about what services you would like to discuss.

last changed 26-May-03