VLAB Software Components


Browser

Browser makes it possible to navigate through the objects in the lab by displaying a graphical (tree) representation of the database. The user can focus on its parts by dynamically expanding or contracting the tree. It is also possible to display graphical representation with each object, making it easy to locate an object visually. Browser also provides database management features, such as drag/drop or cut/copy/paste.

Hyperbrowser

Hyperbrowser assists users in creating, modifying and navigating through hyperobject databases. Its functionality is almost identical to that of Browser. To avoid confusion between Browser and Hyperbrowser, it is possible to configure these two applications to have different visual appearances.

Object Manager

Object manager is a tool used to manipulate the internals of a specific object.  When invoked, object manager displays the object's icon and allows the user to choose actions from its configurable pulldown menus. When the experiment is over, the object manager can save the results back into the database.

Panel Manager

Panel manager makes it convenient to modify parameters in text-files without using a text editor.  A panel is a collection of GUI components whose actions are translated into text-editing operations. For example, by moving a slider the user could be changing a value of a number in a datafile.

Metatext

Metatext is a predecessor of hyperbrowser.  It was used to access VLAB objects in arbitrary order, independent of the hierarchical organization of the database.

Remote Access Server

Remote access server allows VLAB users to access remote databases of objects over the Internet. Remote access server has to be run on the server containing the remote objects. Then any VLAB application can access databases on that server by talking to the remote access server.

VLAB Daemon

VLAB daemon is needed for interclient communication among other VLAB applications. It is completely transparent to the end-user, as it is automatically started by the first VLAB application and then terminated by the last one to quit.