Web User Interface Mechanism

One of the early engineering decisions is choosing a mechanism to generate dynamic web pages. Rather than static HTML pages, embedded web management system requires dynamic content. The limited resources of an embedded system filters out some options, while the choice of web server could further limit the choices.

Web UI Mechanisms

There are different mechanisms to deliver embedded web applications. CGI is the most basic mechanism, and it is supported by all web servers. The ASP or PHP styled dynamic scripting pages, widely used in most web sites, are lightweight and flexible. Some embedded web servers support a variation of dynamic pages through proprietary and less powerful "markers". Java Applets, although out of fashion, are still used. Flash, which supports powerful UI presentation, is another candidate.

In addition, the embedded web management system could also provide its base interface as XML or SOAP/Web service. The web application then builds its UI presentation through XSL transformation or XML-RPC communication over the XML base interface.

There are other web UI platforms, such as JSP and PHP/Apache that are popular in desktop and server systems. But they do not meet most of the size and memory requirements on most embedded systems.

There is no definite choice as the best mechanism to build a web-based device management system. It depends on several factors, such as browser requirements, size constraints, target users, and engineering expertise.

Contact VegaAltair for detailed comparisons of each mechanism.