Developing and distributing network based engineering solutions

The need to have easy access to the solutions of a variety of frequently occurring engineering problems, has resulted in the development of a wealth of tools ranging from engineering handbooks to sophisticated desktop engineering software. In this paper, we examine the use of internet/intranet-based methods for providing the tools that are commonly needed by engineers in their daily work. Using the World Wide Web as the distribution medium and the Internet browser as the execution environment, Sun Microsystem's Java technology provides the foundation for the development of an Engineer's Tool Box (ETB) that provides a framework whereby independent engineering software tools are linked, managed, and accessed globally via the Internet. Individual applications are developed to address specific engineering problems using simple, straightforward interfaces and are linked into the distributed ETB framework to solve more complex problems. The capabilities and limitations of the Java platform for developing and supporting such Internet based distributed engineering software tools are discussed herein.