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About Entisoft Units --
Measurement Conversion Calculator
(The Internet Version)

Documentation: The Entisoft Units Fact Sheet contains basic information about all versions of Entisoft Units. The Entisoft Tools documentation for the Units Class contains more details. This page describes some things specific to the Internet Version of the program.

Overview: The Internet Version of Entisoft Units consists of three programs (all written in Microsoft Visual Basic) and an HTML "template." UnitsCGI.Exe is the CGI "client" program, UnitsSvr.Exe is the measurement conversion server program, EST10132.DLL is a version of our Entisoft Tools library, and UnitsCGI.HTM is the HTML "template."

UnitsCGI.Exe is a small program that handles the interface between the Web server (Microsoft's Information Server 2.0 in our case) and the measurement conversion server. UnitsCGI.Exe supports the CGI GET and POST methods. It communicates with UnitsSvr.Exe via OLE Automation. UnitsCGI.Exe usually starts very quickly because the libraries it requires have already been loaded into memory implicitly by UnitsSvr.Exe.

UnitsSvr.Exe is another small VB program whose purpose is to "host" the Entisoft Tools library. It does a couple of other minor things like providing a real-time console and recording the log. This program is an out-of-process OLE Automation Server that supports a few simple methods like "Convert" and "Shutdown". The server creates one instance of the Entisoft Tools Units Class which it uses to perform all of the measurement conversions. By using this single instance of the class for all conversion requests, the system does not have to reinitialize the library each time a request is received. UnitsSVR.Exe is currently single-tasking in the sense that it can only process one request at a time.

Entisoft Tools does all of the real work inside its Units Class. It performs the explicit measurement conversions, finds the related units, performs the sample conversions, selects a "tip", and generates the HTML page. The Units Class is based upon our Entisoft Units product. We are using the most recent 32-bit version of Entisoft Tools, which is the in-process OLE Automation Server version.

UnitsCGI.HTM was designed with Microsoft's FrontPage Editor version 1.1. UnitsSvr.Exe reads this template file from the local hard disk (each time the file changes), and a version of the template is hard-coded into both UnitsSvr.Exe and EST10132.DLL in case the file cannot be found.

Problems? Our ISP is a little flaky, as is our beta Web server. We do our best to keep our stuff "up" 24-hours-a-day, but sometimes we fail. We apologize in advance for any problems you may encounter with our service. If you notice any consistent failures with our offerings, please write us.

Windows: Of course, all of this stuff is based upon Windows; it definitely requires Windows to run! One of the nice things about our stuff is that it supports the standard DOS-based CGI interface. We've tested the system with Microsoft's Info. Server (2.0 under NT 4.0b2), O'Reilly's WebSite server, and Microsoft's FrontPage Personal Web Server (under Win 95)--it works with all three.

Licensing. Entisoft Units does not currently include the Internet Version of the program. We think that we will release it in some future version of Entisoft Units, but we have not made a final decision.


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