Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Integrating database and World Wide Web technologies

  • Published:
World Wide Web Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Integrating database and World Wide Web technologies is another topic where industrial and practical activities lead ahead of academic ones. The purpose of this article is to survey the related activities from database people's view and stimulate the interests among the database community. It covers three aspects. First, the efforts that apply established database techniques to retrieving Web information are summarized. These efforts aim to overcome the inadequacy of file system technology on which the Web is based, so that information can be retrieved easily and quickly from the Web. Second, various approaches to interfacing databases via the Web are discussed, with examples of accomplished prototypes and commercial products showing recent advances. Finally, some possible extensions to the traditional database techniques are investigated for building fully fledged Web‐based database applications.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Agnew, B., Z. Wang, C. Faloutsos, and D. Welch (1997), “Multi-media Indexing over the Web,” In Proceedings of the SPIE – the International Society for Optical Engineering, SPIE International Society for Optical Engineering, pp. 72–83.

  • Allaire (1997), “COLD FUSION 3.0,” Allaire Corporation. http://www.allaire.com/project/interfaces/binder.dbm

  • Björn, M. (1995), “An Interactive Relational Database Gateway with Load Balancing,” In Proceedings of the Asia-Pacific World Wide Web Conference, Charles Stuart University. http://www.csu.edu.au/special/conference/apwww95/papers95/mbjorn/mbjorn.html

  • Bra, P.D. (1997), “Finding Information on the Web,” CWI Quarterly. http://wwwis.win.tue.nl/~debra/cwi-qw/article.html

  • Bra, P.D. and R. Post (1994), “Information Retrieval in the World Wide Web: Making Client Based Searching Feasible,” Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 27, 2, 183–192.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buccigrossi, R., A. Crowley, and D. Turner (1996), “A Comprehensive System to Develop Secure Web Accessible Databases,” In Proceedings of the WebNet96, Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education, Charlottesville, VA, pp. 70–75.

    Google Scholar 

  • Catarci, T. (1996), “Interaction with Databases,” IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 16, 2, 67–69.

    Google Scholar 

  • CERC (1996), “Web*,” Concurrent Engineering Research Center (CERC). http://webstar.cerc.wvu.edu

  • Chhabra, B., D. Hardy, A. Hundhausen, D. Merkel, J. Noble, and M. Schwartz (1994), “Integrating Complex Data Access Methods into the Mosaic/ WWW Environment,” Computer Science Department, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO. http://dixxy.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/IT94/Proceedings/DDay/schwartz/schwartz.html

    Google Scholar 

  • Clausnitzer, A., P. Vogel, and S. Wiesener (1995), “A WWW Interface to the OMNIS/Myriad Literature Retrieval Engine,” Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 27, 6, 1017–1026.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cover, R. (1997), “The SGML Web Page.” http://www.sil.org/sgml/sgml.html

  • DB2 (1997), “DB2 World Wide Web Connection,” IBM Corporation. http://www.software.ibm.com/data/db2/www/

  • de Munk, J., A. Aerts, and P.D. Bra (1996), “OODB Support for WWW Applications: Disclosing the Internal Structure of Hyperdocuments,” In Proceedings of the WebNet '96, Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education, Charlottesville, VA, pp. 564–565.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dobson, S. and V. Burrill (1995), “Lightweight Databases,” Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 27, 6, 1009–1015.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dong, X. and L. Su (1997), “Search Engines on the World Wide Web and Information Retrieval from the Internet: A Review and Evaluation,” Online & CD-ROM Review 21, 2, 67–81.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dorland, B., W. Snyder, R. Jones, S. Heinicke, and D. Becker (1996), “Finding the Data: Using Metadata Indices to Locate and Obtain Data on the World Wide Web,” E.O. Hulbert Center for Space Research, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and Hughes STX Corporation and Massachussettes Institute of Technology Media Laboratory. http://edsweb.u-strasbg.fr/waw/dorland/dorland-l.html

  • Duan, N. (1996), “Distributed Database Access in a Corporate Environment Using JAVA,” Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 28, 7, 1149–1156.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eichmann, D. (1994), “The RBSE Spider – Balancing Effective Search Against Web Load,” Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 4, 2, 281–288.

    Google Scholar 

  • Excite (1997), “How WebCrawler Works,” Excite, Inc. http://webcrawler.com/Help/AboutWC/AboutWC.html

  • Falquet, G., J. Guyot, and I. Prince (1996), “Generating Hypertext Views on Databases,” In Proceedings of the XIV INFORSID Congress, Inform. Organiz. & Syst. Decision, INFORSID, Toulouse, France, pp. 269–284.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gaffney, J. (1996), “Illustra's Web DataBlade Module,” SIGMOD Record 25, 1, 105–112.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gravano, L. (1996), “GlOSS: Glossary-of-Servers Server,” Stanford University, Stanford, CA. http://gloss.stanford.edu/

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamilton, G. and R. Cattell (1996), “JDBC: A Java SQL API,” Technical Report, Sun Microsystems, Inc., Palo Alto, CA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hatada, M. and H. Endoh (1997), “Development of Relational Database Access over WWW,” Transactions of the Information Processsing Society of Japan 38, 2, 349–358.

    Google Scholar 

  • Informix (1997), “Informix Product Line and Technology Overview,” Informix Corporation. http://www.informix.com/informix/products/new plo/plo1.htm

  • Ingham, D., S. Caughey, and M. Little (1996), “Fixing the Broken-Link Problem: The W3Objects Approach,” Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 28, 7, 1255–1268.

    Google Scholar 

  • Inquiry (1997), “Ask the SQL Pro, Resources Useful Sites,” Inquiry Company. http://www.inquiry.com/techtips/thesqlpro/webdatabase.html

  • Iris (1997), “All about Notes and Domino,” Iris Associates, Inc. http://www.notes.net/about.nsf

  • Jadav, D. and M. Gupta (1997), “Caching of Large Database Objects in Web Servers,” In Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Research Issues in Data Engineering, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, pp. 10–19.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kimmel, S. (1996), “Robot-Generated Databases on the World Wide Web,” Database 19, 1, 40–43, 46–49.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kiyoki, Y., T. Kitagawa, and T. Hayama (1994), “A Meta-Database System for Semantic Image Search by a Mathematical Model of Meaning,” SIGMOD Record 23, 4, 34–41.

    Google Scholar 

  • Konopnicki, D. and O. Shmueli (1995a), “Defining a High Level Information Gathering System for the World Wide Web,” Technical Report, The Faculty of Computer Science, The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.

    Google Scholar 

  • Konopnicki, D. and O. Shmueli (1995b), “W3QS: A Query System for the World Wide Web,” In Proceedings of the 21th Conference on Very Large Data Bases, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA, pp. 54–65.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kramer, R. (1997), “Database on the Web: Technologies for Federation Architectures and Case Studies,” In Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Management Data, ACM Press, New York, NY, pp. 503–506.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kramer, R., R. Nikolai, A. Koschel, C. Rolker, and P. Lockemann (1997), “WWW-UDK: A Web-based Environmental Meta-Information System,” SIGMOD Record 26, 1, 16–21.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lamas, D., S. Jerrams, and F. Gouveia (1996), “CAIN: Computer Aided Information Navigation: Project Description,” In Proceedings of the WebNet96, Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education, Charlottesville, VA, pp. 554–555.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leighton, H. (1996), “Performance of Four World Wide Web Index Services: Infoseek, Lycos, WebCrawler and WWW Worm.” http://www.winona.msus.edu/is-f.library-f/webind.htm

  • Lincoln, B. and B. Kahle (1997), “WAIS:Wide Area Information Servers,” Thinking Machines Corp. http://getnet.com/gwood/howto/wais.overview.txt

  • Liu, J. (1996), “Understanding WWW Search Tools,” Reference Dept., IUB Libraries. http://www.indiana.edu/~librcsd/search/

  • Lotus (1997), “Lotus Ships InterNotes Web Publisher Release,” Lotus Corporation. http://www.lotus.com/corpcomm/238e.htm

  • Lu, H. and L. Feng (1997), “TWINS: Bridging the Gap between Databases and the Web,” National University of Singapore, submitted for publication.

  • Marchand, Y., J.-L. Guerin, and J.-P. Barthes (1996), “From a Set of Technical Documents to a Hypertext System on the Web,” In Proceedings of the WebNet96, Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education, Charlottesville, VA, pp. 336–341.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mathews, G. and S. Towheed (1995), “NSSDC OMNIWeb: The First Space Physics WWW-Based Data Browsing and Retrieval System,” Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 27, 6, 801–808.

    Google Scholar 

  • McBryan, O. (1994), “WWWW – the World Wide Web Worm.” http://thphys.irb.hr/worm.html

  • MetaCrawler (1997), “WWW Search Help: MetaCrawler.” http://www.lib.ua.edu/mchelp.htm

  • Microsoft (1996), “Publishing Dynamic Applications,” Microsoft Corporation. http://www.microsoft.com/infoserv/docs/program.htm

  • Naughton, P. (1996), The JAVA Handbook, McGraw-Hill, Berkeley, CA.

    Google Scholar 

  • NCSA (1996), “CGI – The Common Gateway Interface,” NCSA HTTPd Development Team. http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi

  • NetDynamics (1997), “NetDynamics,” NetDynamics, Inc. http://www.netdynamics.com

  • Netscape (1995), “Standards Documentation – The Netscape Server API,” Netscape Communications Corporation, Mountain View, CA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Netscape (1996a), “Netscape Products – Netscape Communications Server,” Netscape Communications Corporation. http://www.netscape.com/comprod/netscape commun.html

  • Netscape (1996b), “Standards Documentation – The NSAPI Versus The CGI Interface,” Netscape Communications Corporation, Mountain View, CA.

    Google Scholar 

  • NEXOR (1995), “Introduction to ALIWEB,” NEXOR Ltd, Nottinghan, UK. http://www.nexor.com/public/aliweb/doc/introduction.html

    Google Scholar 

  • Nguyen, T. and V. Srinivasan (1996), “Accessing Relational Database from the World Wide Web,” In Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Management Data, ACM Press, New York, NY, pp. 529–540.

    Google Scholar 

  • OMG (1997a), “CORBA and OMG Information Resources,” The Object Management Group. http://www.acl.lanl.gov/CORBA/#DOCS

  • OMG (1997b), “OMG, CORBA/IIOP,” The Object Management Group. http://www.omg.org/corba/corbiiop.htm

  • Oracle (1997), “Oracle Web Application Server,” Oracle Corporation. http://www.olab.com/products/websystem/webserve

  • Perrochon, L. (1995a), “IDLE: Uniform W3-Access to Interactive Information Servers,” Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 27, 6, 927–938.

    Google Scholar 

  • Perrochon, L. (1995b), “On the Integration of Legacy Information Systems into the World Wide Web,” In Internet-Tutorial of the 1st Joint Annual Meeting of the Gesellschaft f¨ur Informatik (GI) and the Schweizer Infomatiker Gesellschaft (SI) (GISI '95), Springer, Berlin, Germany, pp. 57–60.

    Google Scholar 

  • Perrochon, L. (1995c), “W3 ‘Middleware’: Notions and Concepts,” Institut für Informationssysteme ETH, Zürich, Switzerland. http://www.inf.ethz.ch/department/IS/ea/publications/4www95.html

    Google Scholar 

  • Perrochon, L. (1996), “The Translation Server Project (TSP),” Institut für Informationssysteme ETH, Zürich, Switzerland. http://www.inf.ethz.ch/department/IS/ea/tsp/

    Google Scholar 

  • Poulter, A. (1997), “The Design of World Wide Web Search Engines: A Critical Review,” Program 31, 2.

  • Rasmussen, B. (1995), “WDB – A Web Interface to SQL Databases,” European Southern Observations and the Space Telescope – European Coordinating Facility. http://arch-http.hq.eso.org/bfrasmus/wdb/wdb.html

  • Ronchetti, M., D. Feltrin, V. D Andrea, and G. Succi (1995), “External Reengineering of “Catalogo Bibliografico Trentino”: Lessons Learned,” Dipartimento di Informatica e Studi Aziendali – Universita' di Trento, Italy. http://athos.rutgers.edu/shklar/www4/ronchetti.html

    Google Scholar 

  • SavvySearch (1997), “SavvySearch,” Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO. http://129.82.102.175:2000/

    Google Scholar 

  • Shklar, L. and C. Behrens (1996), “Web Access to NASA's Remote Sensing Data through GeoHarness,” Bell Communications Research and Rutgers University. http://athos.rutgers.edu/~shklar/www4/shklar.html

  • Shklar, L., K. Shah, and C. Basu (1995), “Putting Legacy Data on the Web: A Repository Definition Language,” Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 27, 6, 939–951.

    Google Scholar 

  • Silberschatz, A., M. Stonebraker, and J. Ullman (1996), “Database Research: Achievements and Opportunities Into the 21st Century,” SIGMOD Record 25, 1, 52–63.

    Google Scholar 

  • Software, P. (1995), “A Specification for Writing Internet Server Applications (A High-Performance Alternative to CGI Executables),” Process Software Corporation. http://www.micrsoft.com/intdev/inttech/isapi.htm

  • Sybase (1997), “Sybase SQL Anywhere Professional and the Internet,” Sybase Corporation. http://www.sybase.com/products/system11/workplace/prowhite.html/

  • Tomainolo, N. and J. Packer (1996), “An Analysis of Internet Search Engines: Assessment of Over 200 Search Queries,” Computers in Libraries 16, 6, 58–62.

    Google Scholar 

  • Varela, C., D. Nekhayev, P. Chandrasekharan, C. Krishnan, V. Govindan, D. Modgil, S. Siddiqui, O. Nickolayev, D. Lebedenko, and M. Winslett (1995), “DB: Browsing Object-Oriented Databases over the Web,” Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL. http://www.physics.uiuc.edu/dimych/paper.html

    Google Scholar 

  • VPE (1997), “WebBUILDER,” VPE, Inc. http://www.vpe.com

  • Widom, J. (1995), “Research Problems in Data Warehousing,” In Proceedings 4th International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, ACM Press, New York, NY, pp. 25–30.

    Google Scholar 

  • XML (1997a), “Common Asked Questions about the XML,” W3C SGML Working Group. http://www.ucc.ie/xml

  • XML (1997b), “Extensible Markup Language XML,” W3C Working Group. http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xml

  • Yang, J. and G. Kraise (1996), “An Architecture for Integrating OODBs with WWW,” Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 28, 7, 1243–1254.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yuwono, B. and D. Lee (1996a), “Search and Ranking Algorithms for Locating Resources on the World Wide Web,” In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on the Data Engineering, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, pp. 164–171.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yuwono, B. and D. Lee (1996b), “WISE: A World Wide Web Resource Discovery System,” Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 8, 4, 548–554.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Systems Computer Science, National University of Singapore, Lower Kent Ridge Road, Singapore E-mail

    Hongjun Lu & Ling Feng

Authors
  1. Hongjun Lu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Ling Feng
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Lu, H., Feng, L. Integrating database and World Wide Web technologies. World Wide Web 1, 73–86 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1019203412484

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1019203412484

Keywords

Search

Navigation