A Prototype Implementation of a Framework for Organising Virtual Exhibitions over the

WebAli Elbekai, Nick Rossiter

School of Computing, Engineering and information sciences

Northumbria University Email: ali.elbekai@unn.ac.uk ,

nick.rossiter@unn.ac.uk

Overview

• Related Work

• Prototype of Museum System

• Architecture of System

• Implementation of System

Related Work 1

• Vassil Vassilev 1999– general description/technical specification of information

system for museum information processing

• Vassil Vassilev 2000– publishing museum content over the Web, in archaeology, in

watermark images and in industrial heritage

• Nicholas Crofts 2003– practical application of the CIDOC CRM in integrating a large

and diverse set of data sources. • contain information relating to Geneva's architectural and

cultural heritage.

Related Work 2

• CIDOC/CIDOC CRM Special Interest Group – 1994-2000 and 2000-2002– define the underlying semantics of database

schemata and document structures • for museum documentation

– support of good practice in • conceptual modelling

• data transformation and data exchange

• information integration and mediation of heterogeneous sources.

Related Work 3• Bourret 2004

– XML (and its relations) have many facilities in common with real databases such as

• storage (XML documents), schemas (DTDs, XML schema languages) and programming interfaces (SAX, DOM, and JDOM)

• Wiederhold 1995– wrapper mediator architecture

• uniform user interface• query integrated views of heterogeneous sources

• Manolescu et al 2001– query processor for different schema generation techniques– materialized views over a virtual global schema

Related Work 4• Elbekai & Rossiter 2005a

– algorithm as a technological solution for XQuery interpreter generating

– XSL stylesheet for transforming XML query to SQL query

– XSL stylesheet in implementation of a framework for organising virtual exhibitions

• Elbekai & Rossiter 2005b– prototype of a framework for organising virtual exhibitions

• single XML Schema for specification of the common exhibition • utilising contemporary information technologies for processing XML data

over the Web• pan-European collaboration for organisation of virtual exhibitions information

Prototype• Assumes content published is extract of CIDOC-

compliant museum database– easy standardisation and further dissemination

• Prototype system presented– is built entirely using public domain stack of

technologies for processing XML data in Java• J2SE, J2EE and additional XML and Web Services packages

• functions as an entirely server-side Web application executed by Tomcat server connected to a backend database (one for each participating museum)

Entity Relationship Diagrams• From Chen 1976, provide logical structure of the

databases for our proposed system

• Structure features– Collection may relate to a number of Objects.– Object may contain much Information such as Location,

Reference, Image, Documentation, Acquisition and Collection. – Exhibition has many Collections– Exhibitions can be of different kinds

• public display, virtual exhibition or archive (type of exhibition)

– Institution has many Visitor groups, Exhibitions, Collections, Objects, Information and one Address

Figure 1: Entity Relationship Diagram for the Museum System

Algorithm for Generating XML Stylesheet

• Use generated XSL stylesheet for transforming XQueries to SQL queries

• For each XML schema/stylesheet– build Document Object Model (DOM) tree – pull nodes from DOM – add SELECT clauses

• Generate new generic XML Stylesheet with SQL code

Figure 2: An algorithm for generating XSL to transform XQueries to SQL queries.

Figure 3: Generic XSL Stylesheet (XQuerytoSQLTrans.xsl) for transforming XQuery to SQL

Architecture

• Web browser (Client)– that can connect to the server– to access the Java servlets

• the client can use PCs to run a Java servlet

• Middle Server

• DBMS server– with SQL tables to provide database storage

Middle Server in more detail

• Middle server– set of servers and internal network connecting them – provides web server capable of accessing data

from DBMS and making it available to the client.– choices include

• Web server, Web sever with servlets (Tomcat), SOAP container (AXIS), a Virtual exhibition servlet, Java Server Pages, HTML Pages and XSL stylesheets

• The communication protocol between the database and the museum server could be JDBC

Figure 4: Architecture for the museum system

Implementation 1• Integrated approach• Step 1

– formulate an XQuery – send query to web server tomcat with HTTP

• Step 2– XSL Libraries transform XQuery to SQL

• Step 3– SQL query string is generated

– Java servlet connects to database

– passes the SQL query string to database server over JDBC

Implementation 2

• Step 4– Java servlet class retrieves information according

to SQL query string– XSL stylesheet transforms retrieved data to XML– sends output back to the client

• Result is shown on Tomcat server

Example for search and display of information 1

• After successful login– client is able to search and display object

information.

• Step 1– Client specifies and sends an XQuery such as

• For obj in <collection> Return <obj> Where obj/<regis_Date> > 10.01.02

– to the Web server as a URL by using HTTP

Example for search and display of information 2

• Step 2– Museum server parses and transforms request by

XSL stylesheet (XQuerytoSQLTran.xsl) on the server and creates a SQL query string

• Step 3– transformation is done– SQL query string generated– Java servlet is connected to database server– SQL query passed to the database server over JDBC

Example for search and display of information 3

• Step 4– query is executed– database server returns report to museum server– XSL stylesheet transforms report to HTML by

using the XSL stylesheet (GenXSLHTML.xsl)– sends output back to the client. – Result is shown on Tomcat server

Figure 5 Institutional information displayed

Figure 6 Institutional Information displayed on Tomcat server

Figure 7: Search and display objects

Figure 8: Objects displayed by the Client on Tomcat Server

Figure 9: Search and display information

Figure 10: Objects with registration date is 10.01.03 on Tomcat Server

Figure 11: Search and display information

Figure 12: Opening exhibition information on Tomcat Server

Contribution 1

• Prototype implementation of a framework for organising virtual exhibitions– Uses information provided by the collaborating

museums in the form of Web services. – The museum content published by the museums is

• organised in a homogeneous virtual exhibition space by an exhibition curator

• accessible from a single point of entry - the Virtual Exhibition site.

Contribution 2• The prototype

– assumes content published is an extract of a CIDOC-compliant museum database,

• allowing easy standardisation and further dissemination.

– built entirely using public domain stack of technologies

• for processing XML data in Java (J2SE, J2EE and additional XML and Web Services packages).

– functions as an entirely server-side Web application • executed by Tomcat server connected to a backend database.