Technology Tradeoffs : Server-Side Solutions

• Minimal requirements on the client side
  • HTML
    • The basic language of web pages
  • Forms
    • Goes back to the early versions of Mosaic (the first media capable browser)
• Common Gateway Interface Interface (CGI)
  • between server and other program or script
  • Perl and PHP are possible scripts
  • Often used to handle the data in experiments
  • Can do anything any program can do
  • There are other methods of communication if use Client-Side Solution
• Dynamic Web-Page Generation
  • Use some CGI Mechanism to generate web pages on fly
  • Often from some database as well as from information from client
  • PHP
    • a common open source solution can run on many server platforms

Advantages Low requirements for Client Single known platform for most program execution Excepting HTML and Form interpretation Great flexibility is possible

Disadvantages Limited control of display Only what is possible in HTML, XML, PHP … Timing is limited Can get some timing differences (see Ulf's Method) But will have a large constant error Network traffic during study

• Server-Side Software
  • Perl: http://www.perl.com/
  • PHP: http://www.php.net/
    • Generic PHP Form Processor: http://www.goeritz.net/brmic/
  • MySQL: http://www.mysql.com/

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