Work of the System


Basic work

NEST-Server work as „classic“ server - it waits on a set port (set in the sheet General) to a user demand. When it receive the demand, first it identify an user according to the ID that is send as parametr in the URL (if the user is new, it`ll generate new random ID), after the demand is written to the log file and next the demand is processed. The demands can be following:

• index - show the first page for base selection;
• loadbase - show the page with base description;
• question - send an answer to the set question;
• questionnaire - show the questionnaire with particular answers;
• forward - send the filled questionnaire;
• anything else - try to load relevant object (image, css style, ...), if it`s in the enabled directory.

Knowledge bases

Knowledge bases availabed on the server are loaded to the server`s memory during it`s starting (or after selecting a command Server / Reload bases) and the copy of the selected base is made for each user. The copy of the base`ll be canceled if the user is canceled (the user`ll be canceled if he doesn`t send any demand during a set time) or if the user choose another base.

The knowledge bases availabed on the server have to be saved in the directory „bases“ (that must to be in the same directory as the file NEST_Server.exe) and they have to have the extension „.xml“. In this directory, there has to be the file „base.dtd“ too, that serves to a syntax check.

Web pages

Web pages for the system are made by the same way as classic web pages (that is by using HTML language), but „pseudo tags“ are added into this pages that allows to make consultations with the system. You can find how to create this pages in the chapter „Pages creation“.

NEST Server offer a possibility to have different pages for each base. Particular set of pages have to be saved in different subdirectories in a directory „pages“ (which must be in the same place as the file NEST_Server.exe), whereas the default set of pages are seved in the subdirectory „standard“. You can assign the pages to the base in the system options in the sheet Base` pages. The file for choose the knowledge base (index_htm.dta) is common for each bases and it has to be placed in the directory „pages“ directly.

Log file

Log file is created according to the set of log file (everythings to 1 file, separate file according to the size or according to the date). In this file, there are written demands of users in following structure:
number  IP  ID  date and time  Method/URL/Protokol  referer  agent
where number is ordinal number of record, IP is IP adress of user, ID is identification string of user and agent is web browser used by the user. The items are separeted by tabulator, each record are written in one line.