Vvidget Server ► Forms ► Overview
This forms section is useful for Web application programming, as well as useful in its own right to show how to implement forms.
Forms is a convenient way to script key value pairs and test and demonstrate them. Once the effect is established the key value encoding can be placed in a Web application or static HTML.
Forms examples such as URL Line Graph are particularly interesting because it shows how to abstract the data query by redirecting it to another web server query. This is particularly useful if your data is not in a flat file format, but rather in a database server for instance. There are many examples of retrieving data from a database server using CGI interfaces. If your query is not at the data point level then the form Input String URL shows the same level of indirection, but at a more abstract level. That example reverses the indirection found when the query is built from a web application server.
Using URLs in the query has another advantage. Namely, the data can reside on a data server computer separate from the graphing server.
Flat file data storage, on the other hand, provide a very good amount of straightforward design and are very easy to implement, understand and maintain. As long as the data is in the correct preconceived format this method is probably the best. Of course, the Peer Visual URL also permits data to be encoded inline in the URL for direct encoding, but if the data sets are large then this is not the best way to encode the URL.