Prepared by: Stephen Edmonds December 2004

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Prepared byStephen EdmondsDecember 2004

• Developing the Monash Research Directory

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What is it?

• A searchable web based directory of research
  publications and researchers at Monash
  University.
• Developed using perl and open source modules.

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Search form
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Author search results
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Publication search results
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Author details
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Publication details
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Why?

• Each year the research activities at Monash
  University produce a significant amount of output
  in the form of
• Journal articles
• Books
• Conference papers
• and more
• Unfortunately only a limited number of people are
  aware of the full range of output.

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Why?

• A publicly available directory could potentially
  raise the profile of research activities at the
  University.
• Additionally the Monash Research Directory would
  be the first of a series of research oriented
  tools for
• Researchers at Monash
• People interested in research

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Initial requirements

• Publicly available through the Monash website.
• Restricted access interface through the my.monash
  staff and student portal.
• Utilise existing information from systems around
  the University.
• Present the most up to date information possible.
• Only display research output generated by current
  staff members of the University.

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Research Master

• A commercial product used to track research
  activities around the University.
• Information regarding the research activities is
  entered by representatives from each faculty
  within the University.
• Within Research Master one module contains
  details of the research output.

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Research Master

• and another contains details of the authors of
  the research output.
• 30,000 publications covering 8 years.
• 25,000 distinct authors.
• The information is stored in an Oracle database
  for use with a client application.

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Monash Directory Service

• Contains an entry for each current student or
  member of staff of the University.
• Automatically updated from a number of sources
  such as the payroll system or the internal
  telephone directory.
• Staff members have the ability to enter
  additional information into their entry such as
• Research interests
• Professional associations
• Biography
• Photograph (as a JPEG)
• A standard LDAP service.

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Public Monash website

• Farm of linux boxes running Apache web servers
• Perl CGI is one of many technologies available.

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my.monash portal

• A integrated view of the University for both
  staff members and students.
• Uses HTMLMason, a dynamic web site authoring
  system written in perl.

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The problem so far

• Two backend systems
• Research Master (Oracle database)
• Monash Directory Service (LDAP service)
• Two frontend environments
• my.monash portal (perl through HTMLMason)
• Public website (perl CGI)

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The problem so far

• Some kind of glue is required between these four
  systems

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And the answer was

• A module or set of modules.
• Written in perl.

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But how?

• The preliminary analysis showed that an author
• Has a variety of details.
• Relates to one or more publications.
• While a publication
• Has a variety of details.
• Relates to one or more authors.

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But how?

• This data can be represented by a simple
  hierarchy

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But how?

• This complete encapsulation of business logic
  within classes means that the usage code is
  simply

my research MonashResearchDirectory-new(
... ) if (research-search('name' john
smith)) foreach my author
(research-authors()) print
author-name(), "\n" foreach my
publication (author-publications())
print publication-title(), "\n"

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Publication data issues

• The data contained within the Monash Directory
  Service is clearly defined.
• However the data stored in Research Master for a
  publication can vary from category to category
• and even from year to year.

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Publication data issues
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Publication data issues

• A solution was to retrieve the field labels from
  the database and then generalise the access
  methods on the publication class

foreach my field (publication-fields())
my (label, value) publication-field(field)
if (value) print name,
"\t", value, "\n"
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Internals

• As already stated the act of encapsulating as
  much business logic as possible in the classes
  means that the CGI script and HTMLMason
  component aspects become trivial.
• At first it appeared to be the opposite case for
  the internals of the classes
• however it fortunately did not become as
  complicated as feared.

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Publication title search

• Walkthrough of some of the interesting part of
  the publication title search process when the
  following call is made

research-search('name' john smith)
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Querying Research Master

• Simplified by being able to query the backend
  Oracle database directly.
• A compromise between performance and maintenance
  resulted in a single SQL query.
• Unfortunately information is now duplicated in
  the results

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Querying Research Master

• which can be selectively ignored during
  processing

while (my row sth-fetchrow_hashref('NAME_lc')
) my author
self-_find_or_create_author(row) my
publication self-_find_or_create_pub
lication(row) author-add_publication(pub
lication) publication-add_author(author)

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Querying the Monash Directory Service

• A filter is constructed from the results obtained
  by querying Research Master
• Which is then used to query the Monash Directory
  Service using NetLDAP

my _at_numbers map _-employeenumber()
() self-authors() my ldap_filter
q( . join q, map qq(employeenumber_)
_at_numbers . q)
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Correlating results

• Results from the Monash Directory Service are
  then attached to the appropriate author object

foreach my author (self-authors()) my
entry self-_get_ldap_entry(author-
employeenumber()) author-set_ldap_entry(e
ntry) if entry
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Correlating results

• The publications which do not have at least one
  current staff member of the University as an
  author are now removed from the results

foreach my publication (self-publications())
unless (grep _-is_monash()
publication-authors())
self-destroy_publication(publication)
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Correlating results

• Finally all the authors without any publications
  are removed from the results

foreach my author (self-authors())
unless (author-publications())
self-remove_author(author)
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Results

• At this point the object represents sufficient
  objects to enable the search results to be
  displayed

research-search('name' john
smith) foreach my author (research-authors()
) print author-name(), "\n" foreach
my publication (author-publications())
print publication-title(), "\n"
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Limitations

• At no point do the author or publication objects
  in existence represent the entire Research
  Directory.
• Which means that a fresh search is required for
  the various pages in the interface.
• Not such of an issue due to the stateless nature
  of the web.

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Complicated scientific formula in titles

• Plain text
• 2
• Rich text formatted
• \rtf1\ansi\deff0\fonttbl\f0\fswiss
  Arial\f1\fnil\fcharset2 Symbol
  \viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang1033\f0\fs24 2 \fs18
  Unprecedented \f1\fs24 m-h\up5\fs14 2\up0\fs24
  h\up5\fs14 2\up0\f0\fs18 - pyrazolate
  coordination in \Yb(\f1\fs24 h\up5\f0\fs14
  2\up0\fs18 - \f1\fs24\'a6\f0\fs18 Bu\dn5\fs14
  2\up0\fs18 pz)(\f1\fs24 m\f0\fs18 -\f1\fs24
  h\up5\f0\fs14 2\up0\fs18 \f1\fs24 h\up5\f0\fs14
  2\up0\fs18 -\f1\fs24\'a6\f0\fs18 Bu\dn5\fs14
  2\up0\fs18 pz)(thf)\\dn5\fs14 2\up0\fs18 \par
  
• Correctly rendered
• 2 Unprecedented µ-?2?2- pyrazolate coordination
  in Yb(?2- Bu2pz)(µ-?2?2-Bu2pz)(thf)2

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Complicated scientific formula in titles

• Unfortunately this cannot be reliably rendered
  using HTML.
• The perl module RTFHTMLConverter is able to
  convert the RTF above to
• 2 Unprecedented m-h2h2- pyrazolate coordination
  in Yb(h2 - Bu2pz)(m-h2h2 -Bu2pz)(thf)2
• While not perfect it is a significant improvement
  and deemed satisfactory.

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Conclusion

• A practical example of how perl can be used to
  draw information from two sources, one a
  commercial application, and present the
  information in two similar but disparate
  environments.
• All by using two widely used modules
• DBI (and DBDOracle)
• NetLDAP
• And a third publicly available module
• RTFHTMLConverter

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Thank you

• Any questions?
• The publicly available version of the Monash
  Research Directory is available at
• http//monash.edu/research/directory/