The FACTS Web Services (FWS) advanced architecture allows for dynamic access to FACTS servers over the Internet. Its normal configuration makes use of a multi-layered server model. Direct interaction to the Internet is accomplished through the use of an FWS enabled Apache web server. The Apache web server quickly dispatches non-dynamic content, but will forward requests for dynamic content through the FWS core server. The FWS core server consists of a number of agent processes working under the direction of a single server process. Each agent acts upon their requests by making use of an extensible library of functions which simply and quickly interfaces with FACTS programs and its data.

The FWS enabled Apache web server combines the power of the Apache web server engine and the flexibility of the Providex development environment. The addition of our FWS module into Apache enables it to work in concert with the FWS server. This allows for improved performance and eases future adoption of new Internet standards. It is recommended, but not required, for the Apache web server run on a machine separate from that which serves the FACTS programs. With this setup, serving ordinary web content has no effect on the FACTS server load. In addition, the FACTS server is not directly open to the Internet thus reducing security vulnerabilities.

If secure communications are required, SSL based encryption technology can be simply added to the Apache web server. In addition, an encrypted tunnel and adequate firewalls can be used between the Apache server and the FWS server. This completely shields all FACTS data from prying eyes on the network.

The FWS core is written entirely in the Providex language and leverages the TCP/IP features of Providex in order to efficiently handle incoming requests. It is an HTTP/1.0 compliant web server fully capable of acting as a stand alone Internet web server. In addition to functioning as a web server by providing static content, it allows the serving of dynamic content through the parsing of HTML documents for FWS specific HTML tags.