Victoria Marshall and Kevin O'Neill, CLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
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Transcript of Victoria Marshall and Kevin O'Neill, CLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
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DataWeb: Three worlds collide
A talk given at the Institutional Web Management Workshop, Newcastle, 15-17
September 1998
Victoria Marshall and Kevin O'Neill, CLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
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Contents• What is DataWeb?
• Motivation
• General requirement #1: Distributed responsibility
• General requirement #2: Utilise existing databases
• General requirement #3: Consistent(ish) look and feel
• Problem #1: Distributed responsibility
• Problem #2: User interfaces vs databases
• Problem #3: Technology
• What is ASP?
• Disadvantages of ASP
• Advantages of ASP
• System architecture
• Web design concept #1: Activities
• Web design concept #2: Expand-in-place metaphor
• Web design concept #3: Different views
• Internal web design concept number 1: Weblet managers and editors
• Internal web design concept number 2: HTML
• Internal web design concept number 3: It's the Web :-(
• Design of the database
• Conclusions
• The future
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What Is DataWeb?
It's a web
It's a web created from a database
It's a web created from a database on-the-fly
The DCI web is a practical application of it
Launched in April 1997
First phase of development finished by October 1997
About to start planning next (Java) phase
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Motivation
Old TCS and CISD webs fairly large (>7K pages)
Design largely unchanged since 1994
Difficult to maintain by hand so badly out of date
Update bottleneck through just one web manager
Something had to be done... but what?
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General requirement #1: Distributed responsibilityEmpowerment
Give responsibility for pages to group leaders/project managers
(And everybody else too if they so desire)
"I'd be more inclined to do something if I could do it myself"
Doesn't have to all go through one or two fed-up individuals
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General requirement #2:Utilise existing databasesNo point in yet another copy to get out of synch
Most administrative DBs already have established update mechanisms so make them work for you
Databases reflect up-to-the-minute changes
Re-use of the data works two ways: • 1. More uses for existing data • 2. More uses for the new data
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General requirement #2:Consistent(ish) look and feelDon't want to have to edit all the pages every time the corporate name changes
• ... or the corporate colours change • ... or every time the department is restructured
(as happens to DCI) • ... or every time a new browser or version of
HTML comes out
... or every time the web manager decides it's time for a revamp
But allow some individuality if required
But cannot be a closed system
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Problem #1: Distributed responsibility
Distributed responsibility --> distributed editing
Distributed editing --> variable HTML expertise
Distributed editing --> no central point of control
But management still need to find out what's going on
(Who did it? When? Why?)
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Problem #2:User interfaces vs databasesA good DB structure rarely makes an exciting interface ... and vice-versa
Database people say: "The information must be structured in a meaningful way"
User interface people say: "The information is excruciating and inpenetrably structured"
Database people say: "The colour is immaterial"
User interface people say: "Of *course* the shade of pink matters!"
Need a middle ground - a solid DB, an attractive presentation, and tailored queries in the middle
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Problem #3:TechnologyIs this feasible? Is it going to be too slow?
Java? cgi-bins? ASP? IDC? Something else?
Management wanted zero budget with zero learning time
ASP happened to come along at just the right time
ASP was a server-side (rather than client-side) solution
ASP + ODBC can access SQL DB for data management
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What Is ASP
ASP = Active Server Pages
Part of Microsoft's IIS web server
Enables (VBScript and/or JavaScript) scripting embedded within HTML pages
Example of ASP
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Disadvantages of ASP
ASP ties us to Microsoft and NT on the server-side
(But the concepts and DB interface easily translate to, say, Java)
Bad interaction between server and developing code
You're stuck with .asp? in the URLs unless you do something clever...
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Advantages of ASP
Cheap and cheerful
No client-side constraints
Very fast to put together (but we're not pretending that this is a real programming language)
Fast execution (for a script)
ODBC links to any data source
Example of ODBC access using ASP
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System Architecture
ODBC access to various DBs; Images, PostScript, videos on disk
Copied across at 2am (Buffer Time Zone)
ASP files for data entry NOT copied; nothing goes back inside
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Web design concept #1: ActivitiesWeb is architectured in terms of activities (project, CCP, facility etc)
Each activity is a weblet in its own right, with a human-typable URL
Activities organised into broad classes (R&D, Coordination, Facility etc)...
Example of the R&D broad class
... and types within them
Example of the Distributed Information sub-class
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Web design concept #2: Expand-in-place metaphorBased on GUIDE (Peter Brown, U. Kent, 1986)
Example of an expand-in-place activity
Hyper-(semi)structured text - not the usual 'anarchic' web presentation (more memorable?)
Discourages 'everything linked to everything else' spaghetti
Reader's context is maintained (and no massed ranks of meaningless icons to do it!)
Imposes some linearity on the text
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Web design concept #3: Different viewsOne big HTML page for printing
Example
Searching on acronyms, titles, keywords, section headings, body text etc
Example search page
By associated people (on person pages)
Example person page
Publications by associated activity
Example activity publications page
(Note the REFER format just for fun!)
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Internal web design concept number 1: Weblet managers and editors
Each activity has a Weblet Manager and Weblet Editor (possibly the same person)
Weblet Manager is the contact person; responsible for the page content
Can choose to delegate the actual editing task to...
Weblet Editor who is part of that activity/group
Group/Team has responsibility for their own pages
They agree changes, new wording etc off-line then Weblet Editor makes them
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Internal web design concept number 2: HTMLProforma approach to inputting text
Web Manager's job to determine departmental and/or corporate L&F (the entire web can be revamped in a matter of minutes)
Authors are freed from having to know the overall presentation policy of the pages
For very simply structured text, no HTML knowledge is required
Better if you know at least <P>
Some limitations imposed by SQL on text size (16K characters)
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Internal web design concept number 3: It's the Web :-(Web browsers were never really designed for input
Forms interface is not a good GUI; Java might help a bit
Major headaches were the Back/Reload buttons
Subtle differences between browsers affect the presentation and input
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Design of the database
This was Kevin's job (thank goodness!)
He says "The biggest problem was understanding the interface designer"
Tension between optimising the DB for reporting and updates via the interface
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ConclusionsDataWeb is a cutting-edge concept as well as an application
The result is pretty good, and has been in use within the department for over a year
19 groups on-line, 89 activities, >1000 publications, 270 partners
People don't always realise it's a database! Could you just... Our group is called 'XYZ' but we prefer to be known as 'PQR'; could you change it on our web pages, please?
In my photo my hair is too blond; could you make it a bit more
brunette, please? The project has highlighted inconsistencies between personnel's/everybody else's view(s) of the world!
ASP is cheap and cheerful; useful for smallish things
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The future
Implementation in Java
Dynamic, virtual weblets
Registration of interest
That was the corporate pitch... Any questions so far?
The horror stories