Database‐driven Web sites: a case study with software in biotechnology and bioengineering
| Published date | 01 August 2004 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470410552992 |
| Date | 01 August 2004 |
| Pages | 357-361 |
| Author | Shivarama Rao |
Database-driven Web
sites: a case study with
software in
biotechnology and
bioengineering
Shivarama Rao
The author
Shivarama Rao is a Lecturer in the Department of Library and
Information Science at the University of Jammu, Jammu, India.
Keywords
Relational databases, Indexing, Databases, Biotechnology
Abstract
The problems with cataloguing and categorising heterogeneous
resources on the World Wide Web for retrieving precise
information are discussed. By providing a database approach to
the Web site, these problems can be solved to some extent. The
design is done for software in biotechnology and bioengineering.
The data about bio software on the Web are collected and
arranged in a generalised standard format. These are loaded on
to a MYSQL database and are accessed through Practical
Extraction and Reporting Language (PERL) script. An attempt has
also been made to study the search and memory allocation
performance for the following databases: MYSQL, World Wide
Web Integrated Set Of Information System (WWWISIS), and
Managing Gigabytes (MG).
Electronic access
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is
available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0264-0473.htm
Introduction
Within a Website there is muchmaterial present of
differing natures. This information can differ with
respect to time; some of the information is highly
dynamic, changing daily or hourly while other
information hardly changes at all. The information
can also differ with respect to detail; some is
detailed paragraphs of text while other information
is telegram style overviews or summaries of
information.
The differing natures of the information is
important to the user and as such the structure
should go some way to indicating what the nature
is, areas of information of the same nature should
be clearly grouped together to indicate the
similarity in nature. That way regular visitors to
the site can immediately make their way to the new
information without having to read things that they
may have already seen several times before, also
readers having a quick browse will not be
confronted with huge blocks of text and vice versa.
A book always has the index at the back and the
table of contents at the front. A film has the main
titles at the beginning and a complete list of titles at
the end. Each existing medium has its own
recognised conventions for structuring the
information, sometimes with an obvious reasoning
behind the choice and sometimes just because
everyone else does it in that way. A similar thing is
happening with the way people structure Web
sites. The standards and rules of thumb for the
coming generations are being established today.
A good Webdesigner should be aware of what is
happening in the medium (as should any
designer). They should not copy blindly but
should alter and reuse ideas in a constructive and
meditated manner. They should also try and
escape from the constant use off the tree structure.
Other structures are emerging and should be given
a chance; chains, chains with overviews, loops etc.
The advent of information technology has led to
new ways of information handling. For instance,
what started in the late 1980s as database
management system (DBMS) then transformed
itself to relational database management systems
(RDBMS). In recent years, people around the
world have perfected the art of collating and
searching information on the Internet. Search
engines are used as a tool to retrieve information
from the Internet. In the Internet the information
is not organised in terms of their structure, content
and quality, it is chaotic. Hence retrieving precise
information from search engines is like finding
needle from a haystack. Retrieving information
from a Webpage is also quite difficult because of its
static nature of hypertext markup language
(HTML) pages. HTML, which is used for the
The Electronic Library
Volume 22 · Number 4 · 2004 · pp.357-361
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited · ISSN0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/02640470410552992
357
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