Events online

1
Events on-line

• Stephen Emmott
• Web Editor
• Kings College London
• Kings College London is dedicated to the
  advancement of knowledge, learning and
  understanding in the service of society.

2
Introduction

• About Kings
• 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
3
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

4
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

5
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

6
Implementation the DTD

lt?XML version"1.0"?gt lt!-- This Document Type
Definition declares Entities, Elements,
Attributes and Notations for the document type
"kcl_events" --gt lt!ELEMENT EVENT (PCDATA
CREATOREMAIL CREATED MODIFIED TIME DATE
TYPE SOURCE COLLECTION TITLE BOOKINGINFO
SPEAKER SPEAKERDESIG SPEAKERSOURCE
SIGNIFICANCE ACCESS LOCATION DIRECTIONS
DESCRIPTION MOREINFO)gt lt!ELEMENT CREATOREMAIL
(PCDATA)gt lt!ELEMENT CREATED (PCDATA)gt lt!ELEMENT
MODIFIED (PCDATA)gt lt!ELEMENT TIME
(PCDATA)gt lt!ELEMENT DATE (PCDATA)gt lt!ELEMENT
TYPE (PCDATA)gt lt!ELEMENT SOURCE
(PCDATA)gt lt!ELEMENT COLLECTION
(PCDATA)gt lt!ELEMENT TITLE (PCDATA)gt lt!ELEMENT
BOOKINGINFO (PCDATA)gt lt!ELEMENT SPEAKER
(PCDATA)gt lt!ELEMENT SPEAKERDESIG
(PCDATA)gt lt!ELEMENT SPEAKERSOURCE
(PCDATA)gt lt!ELEMENT SIGNIFICANCE
(PCDATA)gt lt!ELEMENT ACCESS (PCDATA)gt lt!ELEMENT
LOCATION (PCDATA)gt lt!ELEMENT DIRECTIONS
(PCDATA)gt lt!ELEMENT DESCRIPTION
(PCDATA)gt lt!ELEMENT MOREINFO (PCDATA)gt
Please note this DTD is subject to revision
7
Implementation overview
Event page
Index page
Event page
Link page
Event page
Contributors
Frontier ODB
WWW pages
8
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
and exported to file - Main (index) page
generated and exported to file - Exported pages
uploaded to main College server via FTP
Frontier ODB
9
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

10
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/

11
Software

• Fetch (Mac only) used for uploading files to
  the main WWW server
• http//www.dartmouth.edu/
• Frontier 5.0.1(Mac, WinNT, Win95) 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.ht
  ml

12
Q A

• Any Questions?