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The Client Side

The client application is embedded inside an application called WeirdX. WeirdX is a pure Java X Window System Server, which is released under the GPL. It allows you to run a graphical application on a server machine and then to redirect the graphical output to another machine where it is displayed using WeirdX. It was necessary to launch the client application deep within the WeirdX code, due to the poorly designed way this program is written. The client application constructs the X-Server in a JTabbedPane object, and then passes this object through to the "Display" class where it is inserted into the main frame.

The Display class is a JFrame that hold two tabs at the top of the frame, one which holds the cluster information panel, and the other that holds the WeirdX X-Server. The cluster information panel is comprised of a customised AbstractTableModel class called MainTableModel, as well as a node information panel on the left. Whenever a user clicks on a row on the table of nodes, information about the corresponding node appears on the left-hand panel. This panel consists of two moving graphs, and some information about the node. The moving graphs show the average load of the node over a period of time, and the percentage of memory being used. Whenever the "Display" class is updated with new values from the cluster, which happens every four seconds, these graphs are updated, with all previous values being shifted one slot to the left.


next up previous contents
Next: Patterns used Up: The Graphical User Interface Previous: Extracting information from the   Contents
Colm O hEigeartaigh 2003-05-30