Attaching WWW interfaces to scientific software opens new opportunities to researchers by making their results available to wide scientific community in a way complimentary to publication. We have shown that this task may be much easier than many used to think: the amount of additional code is small, the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) can be written in any language, not necessarily PERL, and the software can be interfaced on any operating system it was originally written and does not have to be ported to UNIX. This paper provides some useful recipes resulted from seven years of author's experience in developing and maintaining highly successful X-ray Web server project. All these solutions are based on free public domain software (Apache, GnuPlot, and InfoZip) and applicable for multiple computer platforms. Some practical examples are provided.
X-ray Server is a public project operational at the APS since 1997 with the goals to explore novel network technologies for providing wide scientific community with access to personal research results, establishing scientific collaborations, and refining scientific software. The Server provides Web-based access to a number of programs developed by the author in the field of X-ray diffraction and scattering. The software code operates directly on the Server available for use without downloading. Currently seven programs are accessible that have been used more than 85,000 times. This report discusses the Server philosophy, provides an overview of the physical models and algorithms beneath the codes and demonstrates some applications of the programs. It is shown with examples and statistics how the Server goals are achieved. The plans for further X-ray Server development are outlined.
Conference Committee Involvement (1)
Advances in Computational Methods for X-Ray and Neutron Optics
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