Designing Intranet Information Services IIS 2

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Designing Intranet Information Services (IIS) - 2
T.B. RajashekarNational Centre for Science
InformationIndian Institute of ScienceBangalore
560 012 (EMail raja_at_ncsi.iisc.ernet.in)
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We covered in Part 1

• Goals of IIS
• Design elements - 1
• Information auditing
• User community and their preferences
• Infrastructure and resources
• IIS architecture
• Content storage and processing

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We will now discuss

• Design elements 2
• Web style guide
• Metadata
• Subject organization
• Resource type access
• Database driven approach for content management
• Customisation/ personalization
• Relevance of XML
• Resources

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Goals of IIS

• Managed publishing and hosting of content
• What, who, where, why, how
• Integration of internal/ external, fee/ free
  content
• Integration of legacy content
• Structured and controlled access to content
• Usage monitoring
• Training and maintenance

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User Community
Information Assets
Infrastructure Resources
IISDesign Components
Content Storage Processing
Subject Organization
IIS Architecture
Database Approach
Web Style Guide
Metadata
Personalization
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Design Elements Web Style Guide

• Essential for all large sites best practice for
  content creation, publishing and maintenance
• Gives consistent and uniform look to all the
  sites
• To be followed by authors and editors
• To be used by programmers for automatic
  generation of pages

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Design Elements Web Style Guide Typical
Contents

• Page design HTML coding
• Language usage
• Navigational elements
• Graphics
• Fonts, size, colors

• Graphics
• SSI
• Templates
• CSS

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Design Elements Web Style Guide

• Examples
• ATT.COM 2001 Design System Guide
  (http//www.att.com/style/)
• BCR Web Site Style Manual (Bibliographical Center
  for Research, USA) http//www.bcr.org/stylemanual/
  )
• NYC.GOV Style Guide http//www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/s
  tyle/

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Design Elements Metadata

• Data about other data (e.g. library catalog
  record, bibliographic record)
• Provides context to content
• A metadata record consists of a set of
  attributes, or elements, necessary to describe an
  information source
• Basis for resource discovery

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Author Title .Subject Source type
Format .
META DATA
Documents
Audio
Author Title .Subject Source type
Format .
Video
Database
Author Title .Subject Source type
Format .
Digital Content
Print sources
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Design Elements Metadata

• Metadata may carry different information about
  the resource
• Descriptive, administrative, rights management,
  security and authentication, etc.
• Applicable for all types of digital content
• An international standard Dublin Core
• Widely adopted on Internet/ intranets

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Design Elements Metadata

• Dublin Core
• International standard for describing electronic
  information resources
• Consists of 15 elements, each repeatable, none
  mandatory
• Conceived in 1994
• Has reached standard status W3C, NISO, ISO
• Widely used in several projects around the world
• Being refined further

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Design Elements Metadata
DC Metadata element set

• Title
• Author/Creator
• Subject /Keywords
• Description
• Publisher
• Other Contributor
• Date

• Resource Type
• Format
• Resource Identifier
• Source
• Language
• Relation
• Coverage
• Rights Management

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Design Elements Metadata

• Case study Weyerhaeuser (A forest products
  company) intranet 10,000 employees 25,000
  remote locations
• Adopted DC for corporate intranet in 1998
• Goals
• To provide in-depth, consistent access to
  information on Weyerhaeuser intranet

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Design Elements Metadata

• Developed a 19 field metadata scheme
• Bibliographic, management and descriptive
  information
• Scope Use in HTML pages (via META tag)ltMETA
  NAMEWY.fieldname CONTENTfieldcontentgt
• Implementation
• Metadata generator HTML form CGI script
• Mechanism for incorporating the generated
  metadata into HTML pages

Study the extracts given in your course material
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DC in HTML

• lthtmlgtltheadgt
• lttitlegtUKOLN Home Pagelt/titlegt
• ltmeta name"DC.Title content"UKOLN UK Office
  for Library and Information Networking"gt
• ltmeta name"DC.Subject" content"national centre,
  network information support, library community,
  awareness, research, information services, public
  library networking, bibliographic management,
  distributed library systems, metadata, resource
  discovery, conferences, lectures, workshops"gt
• ltmeta name"DC.Description" content"UKOLN is a
  national centre for support in network
  information management in the library and
  information communities. It provides awareness,
  research and information services"gt
• ltmeta name"DC.Creator" contentUKOLN
  Information Services Group"gt
• lt/headgt
• ...

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Design Elements Metadata

• How do we use the metadata?
• Embed with the content
• Possible only with HTML content
• Store as records in a database separate from the
  sources, each record describing a source
• Ideal will support all content, facilitate
  search, better content management and
  personalization

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Design Elements Subject Organization

• Essential for improving quality of search
• List of controlled subject terms/ categories
  used in subject/ keyword fields
• Simple list
• Hierarchical useful for browsing (as in Yahoo!)
• Notation-based (e.g. ACM)
• Thesaurus-based

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Design Elements Resource Type

• Apart from subject, users often access resources
  by resource type
• Databases, directories, e-journals, patents,
  courseware, etc.
• Useful to support this via metadata
• Can be combined with subject, to support
  cross-listing of resources

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Design Elements Database Approach

• Information about each individual document,
  database (multi-record resources) is kept as a
  record in the meta database
• Advantages
• Web-based content management
• Improved searching and resource discovery
• Dynamic and consistent output presentation
• Easy maintenance redesign becomes easy
• Usage patterns can be captured easily
• Customisation is easier

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Design Elements Database Approach

• This is not possible with static HTML pages
• How does it work?
• Middleware applications for content management,
  search retrieval, and output generation
• Downside
• Development and maintenance of the database and
  the applications
• Integration into the workflow
• User training

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Design Elements Database Approach
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Design Elements Database Approach
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Database driven content management tool - Example
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Database driven content management tool - Example
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Database driven content management tool - Example
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Design Elements Customisation Personalization

• Most users use only a small number of resources
• Allow them to set up a profile of preferred
  sources
• These become the default menu picks when they
  visit next time
• Easy to handle in a meta database-driven approach
• Support for customizing look-and-feel of the site

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Design Elements Customisation Personalization

• How is this achieved?
• User id/ login
• Cookies
• Client IP
• User profiles can also be used for push based
  delivery of content
• Example E-TOC and HPIS services of NCSI
• Users create/edit the profiles using web-based
  forms

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An example Push service
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An example Push service (profile set up)
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An example Push service (modification)
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Relevance of XML

• XML Extensible Markup Language
• Designed for the web for data exchange and as a
  neutral data format
• Simplified subset of Standard Generalized Markup
  Language (SGML)
• Formally ratified as a W3C standard in February
  1998
• Specification provides a set of grammar and
  syntax rules for describing the structure of data

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Relevance of XML

• Separates content from presentation
• Supports marking up of structural components of a
  document
• We can define our own tags
• ASCII of the Web OS independent create once
  and use in different ways
• Quality searching
• Can search for field-based content, not just any
  content
• computer (name/model) price lt 700
• Enables data interchange and sharing between
  applications

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Relevance of XML

• What does it mean to use XML for intranet content
  management?
• Use XML as the native format for content
• XML content creation/ publishing tools
• Use HTML as the rendering language
• Browsers understand HTML
• Use style sheets for rendering XML in HTML
• Use XML for data exchange

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XML Document Structure

• All XML documents start with the XML declaration
  lt?xml version"1.0"?gt
• DTD (Document Type Definition) (part of document
  type declaration in prolog), provides the
  definition for the XML documents, and defines
  the document hierarchy, elements, tags and
  syntactic rules for the document structure
• DTD can accompany XML documents or reside outside
  the documents
• Lets take an example and see the two
  possibilities, using IE browser (version 5.0 or
  above) (adbook.xml)

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XML Document With External DTD
XML Declaration
lt?xml version"1.0"?gtlt!DOCTYPE addressbook
SYSTEM "adbook.dtd"gtltaddressbookgt ltperson
id"B.WALLACE" gender"male"gt ltnamegt
ltfamilygtWallacelt/familygt
ltgivengtBoblt/givengt lt/namegt
ltemailgtbwallace_at_megacorp.comlt/emailgt
ltlink manager"C.TUTTLE"/gt lt/persongt
ltperson id"C.TUTTLE" gender"female"gt
ltnamegtltfamilygtTuttlelt/familygtltgivengtClairelt/givengt
lt/namegt ltemailgtctuttle_at_megacorp.comlt/email
gt ltlink subordinates"B.WALLACE"/gt
lt/persongtlt/addressbookgt
Body
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DTD Stored in adbook.dtd File
lt!-- DTD for a simple address book --gtlt!ELEMENT
addressbook (person)gtlt!ELEMENT person
(name,email,link?)gtlt!ATTLIST person id ID
REQUIREDgtlt!ATTLIST person gender (malefemale)
IMPLIEDgtlt!ELEMENT name (family,given)gtlt!ELEMENT
family (PCDATA)gtlt!ELEMENT given
(PCDATA)gtlt!ELEMENT email (PCDATA)gtlt!ELEMENT
link EMPTYgtlt!ATTLIST link manager IDREF IMPLIED
subordinates IDREFS IMPLIEDgt
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XML Document With Accompanying DTD
lt?xml version"1.0"?gtlt!DOCTYPE addressbook
lt!ELEMENT addressbook (person)gtlt!ELEMENT
person (name,email,link?)gtlt!ATTLIST person id
ID REQUIREDgtlt!ATTLIST person gender
(malefemale) IMPLIEDgtlt!ELEMENT name
(family,given)gtlt!ELEMENT family
(PCDATA)gtlt!ELEMENT given (PCDATA)gtlt!ELEMENT
email (PCDATA)gtlt!ELEMENT link EMPTYgtlt!ATTLIST
link manager IDREF IMPLIED subordinates IDREFS
IMPLIEDgtgt
XML Declaration
DTD
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XML Document With Accompanying DTD
ltaddressbookgt ltperson id"B.WALLACE"
gender"male"gt ltnamegt
ltfamilygtWallacelt/familygt
ltgivengtBoblt/givengt lt/namegt
ltemailgtbwallace_at_megacorp.comlt/emailgt
ltlink manager"C.TUTTLE"/gt lt/persongt
ltperson id"C.TUTTLE" gender"female"gt
ltnamegtltfamilygtTuttlelt/familygtltgivengtClairelt/givengt
lt/namegt ltemailgtctuttle_at_megacorp.comlt/email
gt ltlink subordinates"B.WALLACE"/gt
lt/persongtlt/addressbookgt
Body
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Do We Need a DTD?

• DTD is not mandatory for XML documents
• Lets try this out (use adbook.xml)
• Why do we need DTD then?
• DTD provides the Definition for a specific
  class of documents (e.g. reports, theses) -
  document hierarchy, elements, tags and syntactic
  rules for the document structure
• Essential for information exchange between
  applications and services
• Forms the basis for validating the correctness of
  XML documents
• Lets see another example IOP DTD and XML files.

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Do We Need a DTD?
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Inside an XML Document (File)

• An XML document file contains one and only one
  document root element
• Root element contains one or more documents
• Document content is marked up using user defined
  elements (tags) and element attributes
• Document content may also contain entity
  references (replacement text, external
  references, etc.).
• Document content may also contain comments and
  processing instructions

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Inside XML DTD

• DTD defines the document hierarchy in terms of
  the elements, elements themselves and their
  syntactic structure, entities and rules for their
  usage
• This is used for validating XML documents
  Examplelt!--DTD for Books--gtlt!ENTITY cright
  "169"gtlt!ELEMENT books (book)gtlt!ELEMENT book
  (title, isbn, authors, description?,price)gtlt!ELEM
  ENT title (PCDATA)gtlt!ATTLIST title lang
  (englishfrench) REQUIREDgtlt!ELEMENT isbn
  (PCDATA)gtlt!ELEMENT authors (PCDATA)gtlt!ELEMENT
  description (PCDATA)gtlt!ELEMENT price
  (PCDATA)gtlt!ATTLIST price curr (RsDollar)
  IMPLIEDgt

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Well Formed and Valid XML Document

• Well formed XML documents must be syntactically
  correct. What does this mean?
• There is only one Root element and it contains
  the documents content
• Match start-tags with end-tags (except for empty
  element tag)
• Nested elements never overlap
• Attributes are unique and values are in quotes
• Only entity references permitted are amp for
  , lt for lt, gt for gt, apos for , and
  quot for .

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Well Formed and Valid XML Document

• Valid XML documents
• Valid XML documents are well-formed XML documents
  which include an XML declaration and document
  type declaration
• Valid documents must also adhere to the DTD

Lets look at an example using sample Medline
XML document
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Rendering of XML

• How can we view XML documents on the Web?
• XML is about data, not presentation
  presentation has to be handled separately
• This can be handled using CSS (Cascading Style
  Sheets) and XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language
  Transformations)
• CSS and XSLT can be used for rendering XML
  documents on the Web
• IE 5.0 supports viewing XML document trees and
  HTML rendering using CSS
• Lets see a CSS example (syllabus2)

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Resources

• Darlene Fichter. Intranet databases for small and
  large databases. Online, May/June 2000, 88-90.
• Online magazine. Jan/Feb 1999 and May/June
  2001. Focus issues on intranets.
  www.onlineinc.com/onlinemag/
• Dublin Core
• dublincore.org
• purl.oclc.org/metadata/
• Digital library toolkit. Dr. Peter Noerr. Sun
  Micro Systems. 2000. www.sun.com/edu
• XML
• www.oasis-open.org/cover/ (Robin Covers SGML/XML
  page)
• XML4Lib A discussion forum related to XML use on
  libraries (sunsite.berkeley.edu/XML4Lib/)