In Internet based laboratory (I-Lab), the lab devices and pilot plants are tested, controlled and programmed through a client program or standard web browser at remote computer. Control panels of HMI interface and user-controlled webcam allow monitoring the measurement devices or test plant behavior providing visual and audio feedback. As an online lab can be used from many locations and at any time, it can be utilized much more than a conventional lab in omni present omni tempore fashion. The paper presents such online Internet accessible laboratory built at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Sarajevo within the laboratory for HMI/SCADA systems. Web enabled HMI software with OPC communication to PLC controller is used to provide full monitoring and control to remote user, while integrated videoconferencing software is used to implement the rest of the functionalities.

Organizing and completing the final oral defense of a Ph.D. thesis over the Internet as a videoconference session presented both a technical and legal challenge to participants in the process. In this paper we present the experience gained and some recommendations for future similar endeavors as a result of preparing and accomplishing the first Ph.D. defense held at the Universities of Bosnia Herzegovina, with the president of the defense committee guiding the event remotely from his office in the USA. The whole event took place at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Sarajevo.

The objective of the paper is to present generalized approach in design and development of industrial automation systems based on software engineering principles including unified modeling language UML and concept of reusable software and COTS software modules. The said generalization is illustrated on the case example of the design and engineering of the software for one real life project that Faculty software engineering group has completed for local engineering firm. The said project involves monitoring and control system for the refinery oil terminal with truck loading and pipeline shipping of petroleum products. System architecture is based on PLC controllers and can be part of the any larger, network-based, SCADA/HMI system. In the first part of the paper, we present the overall hardware architecture for the system as well as its software structure described with variety of UML diagrams presenting underlying processing logic and communication and human interfaces between systems distributed parts. These formal representations of the system functional requirements are then used, in conjunction with the software tools, for configuring and programming of the controllers as well as designing and coding its interface modules and drivers and HMI interface screens and underlying functionalities. The modeling of both automatic control sequences (for truck loading applications) and programming units that enable operator input from HMI screens (for pipeline shipping) are presented to demonstrate the idea of reusable software approach, further applied in modeling of the user-designed building blocks for the control and monitoring of pumps and MOV's (Motor Operated Valves). Furthermore, some of the real-time performance requirements on communication subsystem and protocols are first defined and tested in developed UML RTD diagrams and then implemented and tested in the target hardware and software integration in commissioning and start-up phase of the developed system.

High level programming languages are usually implemented as compilers, interpreters, pseudo compilers, just in time compilers and compact form interpreters. All of the mentioned approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. The approach proposed in this paper eliminates need for source code as physical entity, making the native machine code the only file that exists and is archived, while the special viewer/editor shows and edits it in a form understandable as a high level language. The viewer/editor acts as integrated all-in-one editor, decompiler and incremental compiler.

Today, more than 70% of all Internet sites are using Apache web servers. Furthermore, some indications are given that 40% of all web delays are due to badly tuned web servers. Consequently, we consider the tuning of web-servers to be a very relevant, practical problem. In this paper we outline an experimental set-up (graduate thesis) aiming at self-tuning of Apache web servers. First, we describe the problem domain, and then we give an overall architecture in the second section. Short analysis of related work and research is given in the third section. We conclude with projections and expectations from our research and experiments. Index Terms – web server, self-management, knowledgebased, self-tuning, automation