Managing program applications

Techniques for managing program applications are disclosed. In an embodiment, an application to be managed has an object-oriented interface that includes objects having data and procedures or methods to change the data. Changing these objects and/or the data of the objects changes the outcome of the application. A hyper-text transfer protocol (HTTP) server, a server-side script engine, and a scheduling mechanism are embedded in the application, i.e., they are made part of, and therefore run on, the same programming process as the application. Tasks to be performed by the application, the HTTP server, and the script engine are scheduled. The HTTP server processes requests of HTTP clients or management terminal and forwards them to the script engine. The script engine, which has direct access to the application objects, can interact with the application to be controlled. Typically, a user, through a web browser, connects to the HTTP server and loads the server script passing some parameters within the underlying HTTP request. The HTTP server runs the script engine for the requested script, which can access application data, manages its objects, performs action, retrieves data, formats the resulting information to be returned to the user interface, etc.