Dept. of Computer and Information science, Linköping University
We have created a first prototype gateway between a LINCKS database and the Word Wide Web. The gateway generates HTML on the fly from the documents in the database. The gateway supporting multiple views of a documents from the single source: full documents, a section, a subsection or a table of contents. Image, sound, and movies can be stored in LINCKS and displayed by the user's WWW browser, there is no limitations of the type of object stored in the database. Today the documents is edited using the xlincks, a X11 browser/editor - with emacs and FrameMaker in the works. The current version of the gateway has been running since the summer 1994.
We are interested in developing a second version of our gateway. We would like to use our experiences from the first prototype to improve it by make it more flexible, supporting form, history browsing etc.
To get about an idea what we currently have running, see the overview or introductory article published at the WWW Fall Conference '94. You could also browse the currently running gateway.
The following points in the current gateway need works (for details see A WWW Front-End to an OODBMS):
xlincks) has today support to parallel editing
where users receive notification when parallel editing of items
occurs. Adding support for notification message on generated pages.
One interested application for you might be to provide support for annotations or other collaborations projects. We are interested in any good/nice ideas about WWW and LINCKS!
As this is a degree project (thus with limited time), we rather see that you worked using the CGI Interface or an CGI Introduction, since we are less interested in writing a new HTTP server ;-). By using CGI interface, we can simplify the design and concentrate our work on the interface to LINCKS and do not need to care about the HTTP protocoll.
If we have our extension language, tcl or python, you will be probably using a mixture of C and the extension language. If not, then it will just be 'C'. Our development environment is Sun, running SunOS 4.1.3, using the X11 window system, but LINCKS is available on most Unix platforms (including linux).
Also, you should probably have some experience with HTML. You will be working with the CGI Interface and HTTP protocol.
See the related projects FrameMaker, Emacs and NFS Interface, which all share a common ground.
For more information and discussion, please contact Martin Sjölin, E++ Bv 129, phone: 013/28 24 10 or mail to marsj@ida.liu.se