Beyond the LabVIEW Web Server
The LabVIEW web server enables you to easily publish documents and VI images from
the LabVIEW environment as well as from built applications. It also provides a simple
way to control access from which Internet addresses users may access the server and
which VIs they can view.
The built-in web server does not enable web users to control your VIs from within
their browser. It also doesn't allow you to give different access to different users.
You can use other products to take additional advantage of the web.
The Internet Developers Toolkit contains several tools that you can use in your
LabVIEW applications to take advantage of the Internet
- FTP VIs
- The FTP VIs allow you to use the File Transfer Protocol to send and retrieve
files from FTP servers. Additionally, FTP VIs allow you to create directories and
delete file and directories on remote FTP servers.
- Email VIs
- The email VIs allow you to use the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol to send email
programmatically. You can send message to one or more recipients and you can attach
files (such as test results) to your email.
- Telnet VIs
- The Telnet VIs allow you to talk to devices over the Telnet protocol. For example,
you can use these VIs to programmatically log on to a remote Unix shell and execute
commands.
- URL VIs
- The URL VIs allow you to built URLs and to retrieve documents from HTTP, FTP
and Gopher servers on the Internet
- HTTP Server
- The HTTP Server in the Internet Toolkit performs additional tasks beyond that
of the built-in web server. The server has CGI support, allowing you to write VIs
that execute in response to user requests. This allows you to write applications
that are controlled from a browser. The server comes with a large collection
of HTML VIs that allow you to programmatically create HTML documents.
Additionally, the Internet Toolkit HTTP Server has more sophisticated access control
mechanism. Beside specifying which hosts have access to the server and which VIs
are published, you can also require user name and password authentication and you
can give select users access to specific directories or VI images.
DataSocket
You can use the DataSocket technology to easily publish data (as opposed to HTML
documents or images) on the Internet. DataSockets can be used with LabVIEW (on Windows),
LabWindows, Visual Basic, Visual C++ and any other application that can use ActiveX
controls.
ComponentWorks are ActiveX controls that you can embed in your HTML documents
and that can be used to exchange data over the Internet. Using ComponentWorks controls,
users can have live data display and control in their browsers.
