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LPA ProWeb ServerThe LPA ProWeb Server supports the development, testing and deployment of intelligent, dynamic server-based applications on intranets and the Internet. The LPA ProWeb Server allows Web sites to use the powerful reasoning capacity of Prolog completely in the background, with HTML, Java and other standard tools providing the user interface. The LPA ProWeb Server hides the complexity of HTML forms and CGI programming, and by handling all the communication between the forms and the application logic, relieves the developer of all the irksome bookkeeping. This provides an intuitive and robust way for developers to build 'live', dynamic applications. Key features of the LPA ProWeb Server are described in the next few sections.
Transparent Generation of Web InterfacesProWeb will automatically generate all the required HTML and CGI code needed for your application to run smoothly on the Web. ProWeb knows how to create and extract the answers from the forms. Forms can be defined either using a familiar HTML editor, or for complex, dynamic tasks, in ProWeb's sophisticated pseudo-language.
Session ManagementProWeb maintains a database reflecting the current state of a session for each user. This means your application can service multiple asynchronous users simultaneously. This database can be used to control the number of users and their respective length of stay.
Control over Granularity of ConversationsProWeb provides programmatic control over the number of forms/questions to be answered in any single exchange. You can let the user set this at the start of a session. Some users will only want to answer one form at a time, others will want to answer many.
Control over Length of ConversationsProWeb provides various utilities to limit the maximum amount of time to be allowed for interactions to complete. These time-outs can be assigned to both client and server.
Support for Backtracking through SolutionsProWeb also keeps track of the current execution state for each user and uses this information to support backtracking through the search space to provide alternative solutions where appropriate.
Support for Interactive DevelopmentWhen an application has been deployed the communication channel between the client and server is automatically handled by the Common Gateway Interface (CGI). During the development of an application this channel is simulated by copy-and-paste between the client (any HTML browser like Netscape etc) and the server.
Support for Runtime DeploymentProWeb will trap any runtime errors and report them back through to the user via the browser.Prolog is a very powerful technology, ideal for building intelligent solutions. The Web is saturated with information. Low-level languages do not have the capacity to sift, sort and make sense of this volume of data in a meaningful way. ProWeb brings the power of the industry-leading WIN-PROLOG to the Web, and so provides an ideal platform for building Intelligent Agents, smart search engines, diagnostic systems and data mining utilities and so on.
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