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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Difficult to maintain by hand so badly out of date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