From: Randy Kramer <rhkramer@...>
Date: 2006-04-05T23:30:17+09:00
Subject: Re: is GUI a weak point?

On Wednesday 05 April 2006 09:40 am, azrael@cream.org wrote:
> > > Using Rails and a web interface is a nice way to present data to an end
> > > user, but it's not always a viable solution.  For example, my company
> > > does diesel engine testing in real time.  There's no way a web based
> > > Rails interface would even come close to being able to meet our needs
> > > for that.
> >
> > Until they give the browser persistent connections to the server =)
>
> Look at what GMail has been able to do with XMLHttpRequest.

I can easily imagine that the output the first poster (above) refers to (the 
results of diesel engine testing in real time), are oscilloscope type stuff, 
which generally would be difficult to reproduce (in real time) on a web 
interface.  But, I suspect the frequency range required is not in the MHz or 
GHZ range, but instead in the KHz range?

In any event, at some point the web interface would find it difficult to keep 
up--say you're testing ICs (integrated circuits, just to avoid confusing with 
Internal Combustion engines) in real time.  But, at some point maybe you 
resort to snapshots of the data, digital sampling / recording of the data 
(like sampling of audio or video streams), Fourier transforms (??), or some 
other (more) clever approach.

(sorry about losing the attributions, they were not in the post I'm responding 
to) 

Randy Kramer