It looks as though I've got the facilities I need to start trying my AI
stuff over the Web, namely the Apache Web server under SunOs, and a
Poplog on same. Unfortunately, the Poplog is 14.1, but I hope that's not
too out of date. I'm having to use an old departmental machine for
development because our computing service is worried about security, and
won't allow CGI programs.
Anyway, I'll need to implement semaphores between two processes, one of
which is a continuously running Poplog program (an AI demo), and the
other of which is the server. The latter might be Poplog too, if I try
Steve's Poplite program. The idea would be that a user "logs in" by
calling up a demo-startup page, and the server then starts the relevant
demo program as a new process, and transmits back a first results page.
That would contain a unique id identifying the process, so that if the
user wants to go further, the server can locate that process and restore
its state. The techniques for doing this are messy, but usually boil
down to making the server generate a page which contains the id and
possibly some of the state as hidden fields in a form, or as components
of a URL. (This is sometimes called the "shopping cart problem", because
shops like to implement wine ordering and such, where their server has
to keep track of each customer's order between transactions.)
So can I ask what Unix facilities for signalling between processes are
easily callable from Poplog?
Jocelyn
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