Institutional Web Management Workshop 2001: Organising Chaos

Parallel Session A4: CMS Case Studies - Middleware head-to-head

Leader: Paul Browning, University of Bristol
Venue: Room 210, Peter Froggatt Centre
Time: 09.15-10.45 on Tuesday 26 June 2001

---

Aims & Objectives

1. To examine the nature of institutional information
2. To investigate the technologies available for dealing with database-hosted information via the Web
3. To use a simple and generic example as a vehicle to explore this (e-journals and their URLs)
4. To invite participants to present briefly on their (or someone else's) solution
5. To explore what other issues might be important when building such Web applications
6. To write the experience up as an article for Ariadne

Introduction

PB (10 minutes)

Setting the context. The nature of institutional information - structured vs. unstructured. The pre- vs. post-millenial Web. Working smarter not harder.

Your Specification (should you choose to accept it ....)

Produce a Web application that:

• Allows anonymous read-access to an alphabetically sorted list of e-journal titles and their associated URLs
• The (out of date) information to be used is available as an Access database or as CSV file.
• The application should have functionality and design that is as close as possible to this example. (Note that it should deal elegantly with missing records, e.g. journals beginning with "X".)
• Please provide a link to the application for this page.
• Please provide the source code and a brief account of the recipe which can also be linked from this page.

The Recipes

Various (60 minutes)
 

Middleware	Presenter/Contributor	Application	Source code	Other bits of source code and/or Documentation
FileMakerPro	Simon Chilton	Application	Source code	search_results.htm, search_error.htm, description
PHP	Peter Sorensen	Application	Source code	sources, description
	Christopher Gutteridge	Application	Source code	code to create database, code for application
	Malcolm Raggett	Application	Source code	source
Zope	Paul Browning	Application	Source code	description
ColdFusion	Dominic Hiles	Application	Source code	source
JSP	Dave Spencer	Application	Source code	source

Summary

PB (20 minutes)

Pulling it together including a discussion of "Extending the application":

• Adding authentication
• Integrating authentication with campus-wide scheme
• Write-enabling the database
• Integrating with Library OPAC
• Off-site access - authenticated caches