Internet asset management system for a fuel dispensing environment

DETAILED DESCRIPTION The present invention fulfills these needs by providing communication servers at each device in a fueling environment and connecting the servers to a common network.
The network may be a local network or a largely remote network, such as the Internet.
Preferably, in either embodiment, primary communications between these devices and any devices accessible via the Internet use the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) and hypertext markup language (HTML).
In particular, each device server is adapted to facilitate real-time access between the device server and the remote device upon access of a particular page, script or function.
In particular, the present invention relates to embedding executable content into an HTML page so that when the page is loaded onto an HTML browser after being accessed, the executable content starts running automatically without additional compiling, translation or manipulation of the HTML code.
Preferably, the executable content will act to connect the browser back over the network to the same device from which the page was accessed.
In certain embodiments, the connection may be to a new network port or address, other than that of the page, that supplies real-time status data or opens a connection capable of downloading software data for reconfiguration or updates.
Furthermore, the connection back over the network may use a different protocol in order to increase data transfer or control efficiency.
Example formats for this executable content are Java.
TM.
"applets," which are small applications that conform to a restricted set of programming standards for running on HTML compliant browsers, or ActiveX.
TM.
components, a Microsoft.
RTM.
standard for achieving the same functionality as a Java.
TM.
applet, with less restrictions than Java.
TM.
.
The tradeoff for functionality with ActiveX.
TM.
components results in less security and a greater browser dependency.
Alternatively, the system may use techniques that allow a server to keep a connection open to a browser after the HTML page has been downloaded and to periodically send updated HTML pages