TRG Pro 0:32 Through the built-in e-Mail application with IrDA connection to notebook PC
6.4 An introduction to web interface of e-MARE
As the mentioned earlier, the e-MARE provides a web interface for the mobile user to maintain her personal preferences and install user-defined applications and mobile agents into the system. In this section, we will introduce the instructions of web interface of the e-MARE. The first page of e-MARE web site is shown in Figure 6.1.
Figure 6.1: The first page of e-MARE web site.
In the page which is shown in Figure 6.1, there are six main categories of functions which the user can manipulate. They are User Management, Information Retrieval Database
Management, Search Engine Database Management, Program Installation, Mobile Agent
Management, and Application Management. The User Management allows the system
manager to add/modify/remove the user’s information, and allows the users to modify their own preference. The basic preference of user at least including user’s name, right, e-mailaddress, mobile phone number, tag, and the related information (i.e. information retrieval web
page links, search engine links, etc.) which is associated to the users. By default, the user can not view anything except the user’s name of the system until she login into the system. That is, at the first, the user who wants to access e-MARE system has to fill out her user name and user password in the web page. The process is shown at Figure 6.2.Figure 6.2: The user login page.
After the user has been logged into the system, the left-top corner of the web page will show the user’s login name, and all of that user’s information will be listed in the page too. It is shown as Figure 6.3. Meanwhile, the user may choose any category to manipulate her desired operation about the database of e-MARE. The system will display the information which is associated to the logged user when the user chooses any link on the web page. For example, through the WebPage link, the system will display all links of the user registered web pages. It is shown at Figure 6.4.
Figure 6.3: The page after the user logged into the system.
In Figure 6.4, the system displays all registered URL of the user named ‘minhuang’. All links are numbered in a serial identical number. The number is the accordance for the user to specify for fetching the web page through her mobile devices. If the user specifies the
‘&&SAW’ commands, the list will be transmitted to user’s mailbox in pure ASCII text format.
Then, the user may use the ‘&&AFW(no)’ command to fetch the contents of her desired web page in ASCII text format. The argument no is the item number which is shown in Figure 6.4.
In most situations, this is the easiest way for the mobile user to fetch the web page though her mobile device. The e-MARE system will filter the contents of those listed web page, cut the unwanted images, information, advertisements, and other redundant hyper links. If the user has enough history information on the User Profile of the e-MARE’s database, the system also will rearrange the results according to the user’s history profile.
In theory, every kind of web pages can be putted into the database of the information retrieval of the e-MARE system. All data items in the database can be accessed through the user’s mobile devices. However, for those pages which do not frequently update the contents are not suitable for the mobile user to access. The frequently updated web page such as real-time news, stock quoting, or box score of play games are the best candidates. The later section will show some examples about how to access the information from those web sites.
Figure 6.4: The available links of the user named ‘minhuang’.
As shown in Figure 6.4, the user may enter a new URL at the bottom of the available links page, and press the ‘Add’ button. Then, the entered URL will be inserted into the database of the system, and the new entered data item will be listed on the web pages right now. Of course, the newest inserted data item can be utilized by mobile users via her mobile device as soon as possible.
Entering some keywords and press the ‘search’ button to query the information on the Internet through the Search Engines is the easiest and the most popular activity on the desktop computer for the information collector. In the website of e-MARE, we also provide the interface for the user to settle her search engines. If the user has pressed the InfoRetrieve hyperlink of the main web page, the system will display all available search engines and information sources’ URL. The screen snapshot is shown in Figure 6.5.
Figure 6.5: The list of available search engines on the web page.
Different the simple URL address of the WebPage category, the information on the
InfoRetrieve hyperlink is more complex than WebPage. To enable the querying function of
search engines through mobile device across the long-distance unstable network, the two extra querying field, PreStr, and PostStr is very important. A typical querying URL encoding command string for searching the keyword ‘T65’ in the search engine, http://www.yahoo.com, is shown as follows:http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=t65&ei=UTF-8&fr=fp-tab-web-t&cop=mss&tab=
Entering the above querying string will show all related web pages which the contents includes the keyword ‘T65’ in the search engine’s indexed pages. The typical results returned from Yahoo are shown as Figure 6.6.
Figure 6.6: The querying results of entering the keyword ‘T65’ in Yahoo.
In this example, the URL address of the search engine is http://search.yahoo.com/, the
PreStr of the commands is ‘search?p=’, and the PostStr is
‘&ei=UTF-8&fr=fp-tab-web-t&cop=mss&tab=’. Actually, the PreStr and the PostStr are splitted by the keyword (i.e. ‘t65’). All of the three arguments (The URL of search engine,
PreStr, and PostStr) are the basic elements for the user to query the information through the
Internet. Thus, if the user properly specifies those arguments for specified search engine, she will queries her desired information through that search engine by e-MARE via her mobile device in a uniform way. In the figure which is shown in Figure 6.5, that page also provides the filed for the user to add her new search engine. To add a new search engine is very easy, and it just needs to fill out those three fields on that page, they are The URL of search engine,PreStr, and PostStr. Again, after the user has pressed the ‘Add’ button of that page, this new
search engine interface will be putted into the database of e-MARE, and it can serve the user as soon as possible.The same situation for the user to install the user’s customize programs is shown at Figure 6.7.
Figure 6.7: The available remote programs displaying page.
After the user has clicked the hyper link, Programs, the web site will show all installed programs which are associated with the user. As the Figure 6.7 shows, the programs can be a system command of the server (in our prototype, it is a Linux server), or the user defined program. No matter what the type of the program is, the installed program should satisfy the following requirements:
Of course, it has to be properly executed in the server. The installed program can be written by any programming language. The most important key point is that if this command is not the built-in program of the server, the executable binary format has to be compatible with the system of the remote Mobile Agent Execution Server.
It should be found by the server. That is, if the command is not the built-in commands of the server, the appropriate path has to be included in the prefix of the commands of the data item in the database. Of course, if the command needs some arguments to execute properly, these arguments have also to be attached at the following position of that target command. Hence, the commands with different arguments will occupy more than one different data items. They are all
independently executed with the others.
It should utilize the standard I/O as the data input/output mechanism. Thus, the system can collect the executing results through the standard I/O mechanism.
If it needs some large amount data as the input, or it produces large amount data, the files should be placed in the home directory of the user’s account, and specify the filename in an appropriate way by the built-in instructions of the e-MARE.
The installation process of the programs in the system can be divided into two major parts:
uploading the program into the Mobile Agent Execution Server, inserting the data item into
the database. As mentioned earlier, the target programs, applications, and mobile agents are
all installed in the Mobile Agent Execution Server. In our prototype, it is a RedHat Linux server. That is, if the user wants to install her program into the e-MARE for later usage, first, it should enter the command with full path specification in the New Program filed of the web page which is shown in Figure 6.7. After the user has clicked the ‘Add’ button, the full path of the commands will be one of the data items of the available remote program database of e-MARE. If the command is the user-defined program, the user also has to upload that program into the appropriate directory of Mobile Agent Execution Server. In our implementation, by default, all programs will be placed in the runner’s home directory of theMobile Agent Execution Server. That is, a user account named runner of that server is
responsible for storing the user’s custom programs, and executing one of those programs according to the user’s desire. Our system also provides a web interface for the user to upload her programs into runner’s home directory of Mobile Agent Execution Server. The screen snapshot of the uploading programs web page is shown in Figure 6.8.Figure 6.8: Uploading the remote programs into runner’s home directory.
As shown in Figure 6.8, the authorized user can specify the local programs in the web page, and then click ‘Upload’ button. The QuiXplorer program will upload those selected files to appropriate directory. In our implementation, each e-MARE user has her own sub-directory under the runner’s home directory. Moreover, the each e-MARE user will be added into the QuiXplorer’s administrator’s list. That is, she will own some rights to access (including upload, download, modify, and remove) her files on her own directory. Thanks to the help of QuiXplorer, after the user’s uploading process, the target programs will be listed in the screen, and the screen snapshot is shown in Figure 6.9. If the correspondent data items of those programs are correct, these programs will be found by the server, and be executed in the server as the user’s direction from the commands of her operational e-mail.
Figure 6.9: The screen snapshot of listed available programs for user ‘minhuang’.
The process of mobile agents and applications installation are the same as program installation.