A dynamic data-display system using CGI and server push techniques has been developed at the
Aerodynamics Laboratory of the Institute for Aerospace Research, National Research Council of Canada.
The "system" being replaced consisted of a series of hard-coded references to a specific dumb terminal on a
dedicated RS-232 port provided for the wind tunnel operators. Using the dsplyclient routines,
message generation capability was easily added to the main data acquisition processes of the 2m x 3m Low-speed
Wind Tunnel. Hyperlinks to nph-dsply.pl and dsplystatus.pl were added to the main web
page for the tunnel support staff.
During a recent test for an aircraft manufacturer, in addition to several users monitoring the test sporadically, one browser process remained continuously connected to the display server for over five weeks and displayed over 500 Mb of data during that time. This effectively dismissed the author's concerns about possible memory leaks in Netscape, CGI.pm, and Perl.
Since connecting to the display system is as simple as clicking a link on a web page, there is a "zero learning curve" for the end users. Now, operators and engineers from the laboratory, as well as their industrial counterparts within a secure environment, can easily monitor tests from their desktop workstations and PCs.