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RView
(for Remote View) is a graphical interface in Java which graphically displays remote
variables which change in real-time. It has been originally developed to remotely display
and interact with the status of industrial processes. Connected to industrial supervisory and data acquisition packages (SCADA), it
gives the operators the possibility to have a dynamic view of their process. As you will
notice, it is in fact a full software environment which includes a window manager, a
language interpreter, some network drivers and a set of software components. It also
proposes an API (application programming interface) as a set of interfaces to help
developers who would like to extend the program. If, for example, a user-made graphical
component (Java Bean,
) follows the Rview specification, it will automatically be
able to interact with all the other components.
At the core of the system
resides a data container which we will call the real-time database. This
database stores the value of the variables together with a set of related data such as the
minimum possible value for this variable, etc. These variables are usually reflecting the
status of some other variables located in some remote computers. The interaction between
the real-time database and the remote computer is made via a "DataServer"
which is usually a network driver. This network driver may use the http protocol to
communicate with the remote machine but it can very well use a faster protocol.
Some graphical components represent the variable and allow the user to change their value.
These components are managed by a windowing environment that allows to click and paste on
elements, save configurations, etc.
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