How to create web based whiteboard?

[visharad]

I conduct online tutions in Science and Mathematics. I am thinking that if I have web based whiteboard application, then it will be good. I have a website. My plan is that I will give a url to my student. That url will contain whiteboard + chat application. We will interact through that. It should be possible to draw text and various shapes like circle, triangle, etc. on the whiteboard. Any change made by one of us should be seen in real time by the other.

What technologies should will be required in this? What things should my hosting provider give for this application to run?

[visharad]

My website hosting provider does not support tomcat. Is it possible to develop this application using Ruby on Rails, java-script, Flash, or any other client-side technology instead?

[PeejAvery]

First off, RoR (Ruby on Rails) is a server-side language. And, you need at least one server-side implementation to pull such an application off. As for the client-side, JavaScript or Flash would be fine.

Second, Tomcat doesn't matter here. You need an Apache web server for PHP, or Windows IIS for ASP.NET. Sometimes people will install PHP on IIS, but it isn't as secure or optimized as on Apache.

[visharad]

Thanks PeejAvery
Here are some relevant details about the server:-
Apache version 2.2.14 (Unix)
PHP version 5.2.11
MySQL version 5.0.88-community-log
Architecture x86_64
Operating system Linux

RubyOnRails can also be used.
So, does it mean that a web-based whiteboard+chat application can be created using RubiOnRails and Flash, or RubyOnRails and JavaScript?

[PeejAvery]

Yes, you could use those combinations. However, why develop your own when there are so many software implementations for this already?

Here's a PHP+MySQL example...http://sourceforge.net/projects/whiteboard/