Web browser as computational enviroment

Abstract

The language of technical computing has become more and more popular especially for engineers, scientists and even community in academia. The software that comes with the functionality for processing technical computing does not come free and MATLAB is one of them. Situations whereby these people do not have the necessary equipment to process their defined equations may occur. Thus, their tasks are delayed.

With just a few clicks in a web browser, users can easily access to any online compilers that are found on the net. Nowadays online compilers require only a web browser and Internet connection to access; this has made it significantly for users to work on projects with multiple devices. However, online compilers with the ability for high-level numerical computing environment are normally not found.

Octave that is an alternative to MATLAB was recommended due to its high compatibility and extensive interpretation of other languages other than it owns. In addition, it is also freely distributable software. The aim of this project is to develop a web interface that accepts MATLAB commands using Octave as integration. The approach used in this project was to test for the accurateness of the compiled results at the user end.

Functionality such as graphics plotting, elementary calculations, creating a matrix, matrix arithmetic, solving linear equations and many more were implemented on the web interface. From the test results, it can be concluded that Octave is able to process a limited set of MATLAB technical computing languages.