freeWAIS Multiformat type and WWW front end
davidc@erin.gov.au (David Crossley)
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Date: Mon, 4 Apr 1994 09:03:22 --100
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From: davidc@erin.gov.au (David Crossley)
To: Multiple recipients of list <www-talk@www0.cern.ch>
Subject: freeWAIS Multiformat type and WWW front end
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We are experimenting with providing a WWW front end to a WAIS index of our
holdings of spatial datasets.
I have a number of varied queries and so have posted this message to both
the 'www-talk' and 'wais-talk' lists.
freeWAIS-0.202 provides a multiformat type which allows us to prepare a
WAIS index of text files which document the metadata about each dataset.
If the WAIS query results in a hit on a metadata file then all associated
files with the same root filename are presented by XMosaic.
For example a hit on 'state_boundaries.TEXT' will return:
TEXT ..... the metadata text file
GIF ...... an image of the spatial dataset
PS ....... some documentation as a postscript file
TAR ...... the actual spatial information as a UNIX tar file
HTML ..... a pointer to an HTML document on the WWW server
However I have a few queries about all this...
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We do not store our metadata in text files but in an RDBMS. So we do not
have any text files to index. As far as I can see the only solution is to
run a cron job every few days to generate metadata text files from the
RDBMS for each dataset and index these.
Another solution may be to create a text file for each dataset of likely
keywords, index these and then somehow intercept the query with either a
WAIS server script or a WWW server script. Does anyone know if this would
be possible?
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I know that Mosaic for X-windows version 2.x clients support this
multiformat type. Do any other clients?
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Do any WAIS clients support this multiformat type so that non-WWW access
can be provided?
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Enventually we will have to look at some user authentication aspects
because some of these datasets will be restricted. Can someone please
suggest some starting points to investigate this?
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Is anyone else doing work in this area and are they willing to share
their discoveries?
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This obviously has amazing potential. Anyone interested in this would
do well to look at Marc Andreesen's 'Mosaic And WAIS Tutorial' at
http://wintermute.ncsa.uiuc.edu:8080/wais-tutorial/wais.html
Thanks for the tips Marc.
We hope to have a test server up and running in a couple of weeks at
http://kaos.erin.gov.au/erin.html when this WWW server wil be revitalised.
I will monitor www-talk and wais-talk and fold any email directly to me
plus my own ongoing research into a summary to both lists if there is any
interest.
______________________________________________________________________
ERIN Environmental Resources Information Network ERIN
David Crossley
Geographic Information Systems Manager
internet: davidc@erin.gov.au GPO Box 636
phone: +61 6 2500373 Canberra ACT 2601
fax: +61 6 2500360 Australia
______________________________________________________________________