Overview of content related to 'database'

Web Focus: Towards Library Groupware With Personalised Link Routing

editor — Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly takes a look at the FOAF Semantic Web application and suggests it is time to start evaluating this technology.

What Is FOAF?

The term FOAF [1] stands for Friend of a Friend. As might be deduced from this phrase one of the key applications of FOAF is to provide a mechanism for creating links to one's friends. From the links to one's immediate circle of friends automated software can be used to process links from your friends, which can provide a visualisation of 'friends of a friend'.

WebWatch: An Update on Search Engines Used in UK University Web Sites

editor — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly provides an update of his survey of search engines used in UK Universities.

The initial survey of search engines used on UK University Web sites was carried out during July and August 1999 and the findings were reported in Ariadne issue 21 [1]. Since then the survey has been updated approximately every six months, which allows trends to be identified. In this article we review the trends since the initial survey was carried out.

Web Focus: Guidelines for URI Naming Policies

editor — Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly with some guidelines For URI naming policies in his regular column.

"Cool URIs"

What are "cool URIs"? This term comes from advice provided by W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium). The paper "Cool URIs don't change" [1] begins by saying:

Web Watch: Update of a Survey of the Numbers of UK University Web Servers

editor — Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly updates a survey of the numbers of UK university Web servers.

How many Web servers are there in use within the UK higher education community? What is the profile of server usage within the community - do most institutions take a distributed approach, running many servers, or is a centralised approach more popular? A WebWatch survey was published in June 2000 [1] which aimed to provide answers to these questions. The survey has been repeated recently in order to see if there has been any significant changes.

Web Focus: Report on the Fifth Institutional Web Management Workshop

editor — Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus, reports on the IWMW event in his regular column.

The fifth Institutional Web Management Workshop was held at Queen's University Belfast on 25-27 June 2001. This year's workshop, which had the theme "Organising Chaos", was the largest to date with 150 delegates. It was also the longest workshop, lasting from Monday morning until Wednesday lunchtime. The extra half-day compared with the previous three workshops allowed us to run a full day of interactive parallel sessions.

Web Watch: Carrying Out Your Own Web Watch Survey

editor — Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly describes how you can carry out your own WebWatch benchmarking survey across your own community.

In 1997 UKOLN received funding for a project known as WebWatch [1] . The aim of the WebWatch project was to develop and use automated robot software to analyse Web sites across a number of public sector communities. After the project funding finished UKOLN continued to provide WebWatch surveys across communities such as UK Higher Education Web sites.

Web Focus: HTML is Dead!

editor — Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000

HTML is Dead: Brian Kelly explains why this is, and why it is a good thing.

HTML is Dead?

Previous Web Focus articles have reported on developments which have been the featured prominently in International World Wide Web conferences. These include XML, which was the highlight of the Sixth WWW conference in 1997 [1].

Have developments such as this affected mainstream Web services, or are they restricted to the research community? Indeed, wouldn't it be sensible for HTML authors for mainstream Web services to be still be making use of the same HTML tags (and possibly authoring tools) they mastered several years ago?

Web Focus: The Web On Your Phone and TV

editor — Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly looks at the Web Beyond the PC.

What's the future for Web browsing? Is it the PC running some flavour of MS Windows?. Will the Linux platform take off on the desktop? Or will the Macintosh come back into fashion?

Many statistics on browser usage would suggest that the MS Windows platform has won the battle. The proportion of platforms illustrated in Figure 1 (which shows accesses to the Cultivate Interactive by graphical browsers) is probably not too untypical (information available at [1]).

Web Focus: Institutional Web Management Workshop - The Joined Up Web

editor — Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly reports on the "Institutional Web Management Workshop: The Joined-Up Web" event, held in Bath.

"One of the best workshops I've ever been at"

"Excellent! One of the best workshops I've ever been at"
"I return because it is by far the best way for me to find out what I need to do in the coming year at my site"
"The workshop gets better every year and I never fail to learn something new."

Web Watch: A Survey Of Numbers of UK University Web Servers

editor — Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000

How many web servers are there in the UK Higher Education community? Brian Kelly provides some answers.

How many web servers are there in use within the UK higher education community? What is the profile of server usage within the community - do most institutions take a distributed approach, running many servers, or is a centralised approach more popular? A WebWatch survey has been carried out recently in an attempt to answer these questions.

EEVL News Nuggets

editor — Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly reports on the use of third-party web services.

Background

EEVL: the Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library, is the UK-based, free gateway to engineering information on the Internet. It is part of the EMC Hub, which in turn is part of the Resource Discovery Network (RDN), a national initiative to provide effective access to high quality Internet resources for the UK learning and research communities.. EEVL is a JISC funded service.

Recent news

There seems to be quite a lot of news to report from the EEVL camp.

Web Watch: A Survey of Links to UK University Web Sites

editor — Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly reports on the number of links to University web sites.

Background

On 10 February Phillip Simons sent the following query to the web-support Mailbase list: "Can anyone tell me if there is any way of detecting who is linking to a particular URL? We want to see who still has our old URL on their links pages." [1]. The replies suggested a couple of approaches: looking at referer (sic) fields in server log files and using the link feature provided by a number of search engines to report on pages containing a link to a resource or web site.

Web Focus: Using the Web to Promote Your Web Site

editor — Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly expalins how to promote your web site.

Many readers of this article will be involved in setting up new web sites, possibly for European or nationally-funded projects, for internal, institutional projects or perhaps for community projects. As the size of the web grows there is an increasing awareness of the need to be pro-active in promoting web sites - we can no longer simply sit back and expect visitors to arrive at our new site. This article describes a variety of approaches which can be taken to the promotion of a web site.

Web Watch: A Survey of Institutional Web Gateways

editor — Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly surveys institutional web gateways.

In September 1999 the author ran a 90 minutes hands-on session on Managing Your Institutional Web Gateway [1] at the JANET User Support Workshop which was held at the University of Plymouth. The materials for included a series of exercises in which the participants were asked to go to their own institutional home page, find the main page which contains links to external web resources and comment on the resource. After reviewing their own web site, they were then asked to look at a number of other university web sites and repeat the exercise.

Web Focus: Report on "Institutional Web Management Next Steps" Workshop

editor — Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly reports on the latest "Institutional Web Management Workshop," this year called: "The Next Steps."

The "Institutional Web Management: The Next Steps" workshop took place at Goldsmiths College, London on 7-9 September 1999. This was the third annual event for institutional web managers which has been organised by UK Web Focus. The first workshop was held over 2 day (16/17 July 1997) at Kings College London. As described in the workshop report published in Ariadne [1] the event attracted a total of 95 participants. The workshop provided a valuable opportunity for web editors to meet their peers at other institutions and compare experiences.

WebWatch: UK University Search Engines

editor — Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly explores the search facilities used by UK university Web sites.

In the previous issue of Ariadne an analysis of 404 error messages provided on UK University web sites was carried out [1]. In this issue an analysis of indexing software used to provide searches on UK University web sites is given.

Although the WebWatch project [2] has finished, UKOLN will continue to carry out occasional surveys across UK HE web sites and publish reports in Ariadne. This will enable trends to be observed and documented. We hope the reports will be of interest to managers of institutional web sites.

Web Focus: The Role of the Web Editor

editor — Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly asks, does 'web editor' mean Unix guru or an HTML coder?

Web Focus: Institutional Web Management

editor — Fri, 18 Sep 1998 23:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly reports on the Netskills Institutional Web Management Workshop held in Newcastle.

What Are Document Management Systems?

editor — Fri, 18 Sep 1998 23:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly explains the concept of document management systems.

Web Focus: Ways of Exploiting New Technologies

editor — Sat, 18 Jul 1998 23:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly discusses Intermediaries: Ways Of Exploiting New Technologies.

Since February 1998 HTML 4.0 [1], CSS 2.0[2], the Mathematical Markup Language MathML [3] and the Extensible Markup Language XML [4] have all become W3C Recommendations. These web protocols, all of which are concerned with the way in which information can be represented and displayed, were initially Working Drafts which were developed by the appropriate W3C Working Group.

Web Focus: The 7th World Wide Web Conference

editor — Mon, 18 May 1998 23:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly is interviewed about the 7th World Wide Web Conference upon his return from Brisbane.

Australia is a long way to go for a conference. What were you doing there?

I attended the conference in my role as UK Web Focus and the JISC representative on the World Wide Web Consortium. Attendenance at the World Wide Web conference provides me with an opportunity to monitor the latest Web developments and keep the community informed.

What were the highlights of the conference?

Web Focus Corner: Running an Institutional Web Service

editor — Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly reports on a workshop on running an institutional web service.

Web Focus: Report on the WWW 6 Conference

editor — Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly describes the sixth International World Wide Web conference which took place in California from 7 – 11 April 1997.

The Sixth International World Wide Web Conference took place from 7-11th April 1997 in Santa Clara, California, USA. I attended the conference in my capacity as the JISC representative on the W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium).

About 1,800 people attended the conference. This figure was down on the last two years, due possibly to the close proximity of other conferences - the Javasoft conference attracted about 8,000 delagates and the Microsoft Hardware Engineering conference about 15,000 delegates. Both of these conference took place the week before the WWW 6 conference.

Netskills Corner: Beneath the Surface of Your Web Pages

editor — Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly looks beneath the surface of HTML pages and provides advice on the design of the underlying directory structure.

Pick up a book or read an article on HTML design and what will you find: advice on the use of graphics in Web pages, using tables and providing animation in your pages using technologies such as animated GIFs and client-pull or server-push, use of plug-in software, such as Shockwave, or programming environments such as Java and ActiveX.

There is, however, much more to the design of HTML pages than the appearance as seen by the end user. Of particular importance to the future maintenance of a large set of HTML pages is the underlying directory structure.

Netskills Corner: Fifth WWW Conference, Paris

editor — Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly undertakes the arduous task of attending the 5th WWW Conference in Paris (is there a 'smiley' for 'green with envy'?).

About the Conference

The CNIT

The fifth World Wide Web conference was held at CNIT, La Défense in Paris from 6-10th May 1996. The conference began with a day of tutorials and workshops and concluded with a developer's day. The technical programme took place on the 7-9th May. In addition a Small to Medium Enterprises (SME) Forum was held on 9-10th May.