Institutional Web Management Workshop - Sept 1998 slide 1

Events on-line

Stephen EmmottWeb Editor

King’s College LondonKing’s College London is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge,

learning and understanding in the service of society.

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Introduction About King’s

– over 5000* staff; over 16,500* students; Expenditure of £254* million; 9 schools of study; 7 campuses across London

– combination of centralized and de-centralized administration across the board

About my role– Web Editor– Central (and first) point of contact– Tension between requirements (plural) and resources

(singular)

*Projected figures for Autumn 1999

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Requirements Current approach

– Printing sets the standard– Limitations of print-based approach: content gathered

manually; manual collation of content; batch-processing with infrequent updates; no-backtracking nor opportunities for alteration of content/ presentation once printed/ distributed

New approach– Collection: extracting content from the organisation– Storage: maintaining a single source– Distribution: access for all at minimal cost whilst offering the

opportunity to alter content/ presentation at any time– Presentation: aspiring to the print standard

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Choosing a system XML

– Overview– Storage and granularity– XML is transparent, flexible, portable, and standardized

XML + ODB– The need to be flexible without loosing balance– About Frontier

» Brief History» Using the system

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Implementation The system has two key components:

– The DTD (Document Type Definition)» The blueprint for the way in which the events content is

encoded and the way in which it used/ manipulated in the system

– The Frontier ODB (Object Database)» The system used to collect, parse (into XML), store and

distribute events content» Built-in web-server

All transactions take place through the WWW - clients contribute content; server collects, stores and distributes content; clients access content

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Implementation: the DTD<?XML version="1.0"?>

<!-- This Document Type Definition declares Entities, Elements, Attributes and Notations for the document type "kcl_events" -->

<!ELEMENT EVENT (#PCDATA | CREATOREMAIL | CREATED | MODIFIED | TIME | DATE | TYPE | SOURCE | COLLECTION | TITLE | BOOKINGINFO | SPEAKER | SPEAKERDESIG | SPEAKERSOURCE | SIGNIFICANCE | ACCESS | LOCATION | DIRECTIONS | DESCRIPTION | MOREINFO)*>

<!ELEMENT CREATOREMAIL (#PCDATA)><!ELEMENT CREATED (#PCDATA)><!ELEMENT MODIFIED (#PCDATA)><!ELEMENT TIME (#PCDATA)><!ELEMENT DATE (#PCDATA)><!ELEMENT TYPE (#PCDATA)><!ELEMENT SOURCE (#PCDATA)><!ELEMENT COLLECTION (#PCDATA)><!ELEMENT TITLE (#PCDATA)><!ELEMENT BOOKINGINFO (#PCDATA)><!ELEMENT SPEAKER (#PCDATA)><!ELEMENT SPEAKERDESIG (#PCDATA)><!ELEMENT SPEAKERSOURCE (#PCDATA)><!ELEMENT SIGNIFICANCE (#PCDATA)><!ELEMENT ACCESS (#PCDATA)><!ELEMENT LOCATION (#PCDATA)><!ELEMENT DIRECTIONS (#PCDATA)><!ELEMENT DESCRIPTION (#PCDATA)><!ELEMENT MOREINFO (#PCDATA)>

*

*Please note: this DTD is subject to revision

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Implementation: overview

Eventpage

Eventpage

Eventpage

Contributors FrontierODB

WWWpages

Indexpage

Linkpage

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Implementation: closer

In- Event submitted via on-line form- Parsed into XML using DTD- Stored as a text object (string).

Out-Each event is transformed into HTML and exported to file-Hierarchy of ‘Yahoo-style’ HTML link pages generated andexported to file- Main (index) page generated and exported to file- Exported pages uploaded to main College server via FTP

FrontierODB

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Demonstration On-screen demonstration of the live system:

– Consumers (users) viewpoint» See computer screen

– Contributors viewpoint» See computer screen

– The Administrator viewpoint» See computer screen

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Bibliography Connolly, Dan. XML: principles, tools & techniques,World Wide

Web Journal 2: 4, Winter 1997.– http://www.w3j.com/xml/ (table of contents)

Frontier web-site– http://www.scripting.com/frontier5/

In-progress– http://interaction.in-progress.com/xpublish

WebTechs Validation Service– http://valsvc.webtechs.com/url/

XML.com– http://www.xml.com/

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Software Fetch (Mac only)

: used for uploading files to the main WWW server– http://www.dartmouth.edu/

Frontier 5.0.1(Mac, Win’NT, Win’95): the heart of the system– http://www.userland.com/frontier/trial.html

Xpublish 1.0 (Mac only): generate and validate XML DTD– http://interaction.in-progress.com/xpublish

BBEdit 4.5: general text editing– http://web.barebones.com/products/bbedit/bbedit.html

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Q & A Any Questions?