The web databases have become very popular in the Internet
world for organizing the Information resources. Library and
Information centers can effectively utilize this web technology
for improving as well as delivering new services. This paper
discusses the tools and the techniques of the 'Database - Web'
connectivity in brief and also provides the examples of Perl -
MySql and ASP - MS-Access connectivity

Rajeev, K.R.

Tharayil, Abdul Jaleel

English

Librarians' Digital Library

Workshop on 
 Multimedia and Internet Technologies 
26th   to 28th February, 2001 
DRTC, Bangalore 
 
Paper: AF 
 
 
 
Web databases: A better Solution for 
Organising the Internet Resources 
 
 
Rajeev K R 
SASKEN Communication Technologies Limited 
Bangalore - 560008 
and 
Abdul Jaleel Tharayil 
IBM India, Airport Road 
Bangalore 
 
  
Abstract 
The web databases have become very popular in the Internet 
world for organizing the Information resources. Library & 
Information centers can effectively utilize this web technology 
for improving as well as delivering new services. This paper 
discusses the tools and the techniques of the 'Database - Web' 
connectivity in brief and also provides the examples of Perl - 
MySql  & ASP - MS-Access connectivity.  
Paper: AF                                                                    Rajeev K. R. & Abdul Jaleel Tharayil 
 2
 
Search engines and meta-search engines are now intelligent and capable of 
retrieving the required information from the sea of information resources on the 
net. But to consult a set of specialized net resources more frequently, for several 
reasons, search engines may not be the right choic e.  
 
Many organizations have started identifying and organizing internet resources for 
their internal use. Very often, they consult these resources to retrieve the required 
information. There are two ways to organize these resources. 
 
¨ Static WebPages 
¨ Database driven WebPages 
 
Static WebPages  
As and when the number of resources grows, complexity in organizing the static 
pages will also grow and it becomes very unfriendly to the end -users. In this 
situation one may have to think about database driven WebPages that would help 
the end users to interact with the stored information to retrieve the required 
information.  
 
Database driven WebPages 
Database driven WebPages facilitate the end-user to see only the resources that 
he/she wants to see and can hide the other unwanted resources that he/she doesn't 
want.  
 
To make this happen the following are required. 
¨ A Database server 
¨ Webserver 
¨ Serverside Scripts/Executables  
Web database: a better solution for organizing………                                           Paper: AF 
 3
 
In simple words, a webserver accepts the query from client (Web browser) and 
orders the server side scripts/executables to collect the required information from 
the database server. After collecting the information from the database server, 
server side scripts/executable processes it and gives it to the webserver. Webserver 
in turn sends this processed  information to the web browser as an answer to its 
query. (See Fig . 1)  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Fig. 1 
As of today there are a number of free as well as licensed Database Management 
Systems, Webservers and Server side script engines which are capable of creating 
database driven WebPages. Among these, two database management systems 
(MySql & MS-Access) and two scripting programs (ASP & Perl) are discussed 
here briefly. Most of the popular web servers such as Apache, Microsoft Internet 
Information Server (IIS) etc supports ASP (Active Server Pages) & Perl.  
 
ASP and PERL 
Active Server Pages (ASP) is a server side program designed by Microsoft 
basically to run on their Internet Information Server (IIS). Active Server Pages are 
text based files, comprised of HTML tags and active server scripts. The active 
server scripts, whether in VBScript, JSScript, or your own script compliant 
language, are interpreted by Active Server Pages. Today it is available with other 
web servers also.  
Database 
Server 
Web Browser Web Server Server Side 
Programs  
Paper: AF                                                                    Rajeev K. R. & Abdul Jaleel Tharayil 
 4
Perl is a general language (basically for scripting purposes) designed to run on unix 
platforms. Today it is also available on other platforms. Both these scripting 
engines are free and available from many sources. 
 
MySql and MS-Access 
MySql and MS-Access are mini database management systems, which supports 
Structured Query Languages (SQL). MySql is available on Unix and Windows 
platforms and has many added security features compared to MS-Access and it is 
absolutely free.  Another exciting feature of MySql is that it supports variable field 
length. MS-Access is available only in Windows platform.  
 
Creating Web Databases 
Microsoft uses Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) technology to query the 
databases. So the Active Server Pages (ASP) also requires ODBC technology to 
connect to the database. Where as Perl uses Perl-DBI module to connect to the 
databases. An example of how to connect ASP- MS-Access database and Perl-
MySql database to organise Internet resources on the subject ‘leadership’ is given 
below. 
 
ASP and MS-Access connectivity (Windows Platform) 
Open MS-Access and create a table with the following specifications. 
 
Database name : Library 
Table name  : leadership 
Field I    : title  (Title of the web site) 
Field II  : abstract (Abstract of the web site) 
Field III  : URL (Duplicates are not allowed ) 
Field IV   : Date  (Entered date) 
 
After creating and entering the records in the table called ‘leadership’, save the 
library database under one of the system/web directories. Then one system data 
Web database: a better solution for organizing………                                           Paper: AF 
 5
source name (DSN) has to be created. To create DSN, go to control Panel, select 
ODBC - System DSN - Microsoft Access Driver - Provide one DSN name (say 
mylibrary) - Select the database named library from the corresponding path. This 
DSN name has to be provided in ASP to access the database.  
 
Now one html form (see Fig. 2) has to be created to collect the queries from the 
browser (From the user) and also one .asp file has to be created to collect the 
queries from client (browser) to connect to the database to retrieve and processes 
the required information. Both the .html file and .asp file can be stored in one of 
the web directories and script executable permission should be given to the 
directory where the .asp file is stored. 
 
See Appendix I for the source the code of the leadership.htm & leadership.asp file 
 
Perl - MySql Connectivity (Unix platform) 
Open MySql and create a table with the following specifications. 
 
Database name : Library 
Table name  : leadership 
Field I    : title  (Title of the web site) 
Field II  : abstract (Abstract of the web site) 
Field III  : URL (Duplicates are not allowed) 
Field IV   : Date (Entered date) 
 
After creating and entering the records in the table called ‘leadership’, save the 
library database under one of the system/web directories.  
 
As explained earlier, Now one html form (See Fig. 2 ) has to be created to collect 
the queries from the browser (From the user) and also a Perl script file has to be 
created to collect the queries from client (browser) to connect to the database to 
retrieve and process the required information. Both the .html file and Perl script 
Paper: AF                                                                    Rajeev K. R. & Abdul Jaleel Tharayil 
 6
file can be stored in one of the web directories and executable permission should 
be given to the Perl script file and to the directory where it is stored. 
  
When user queries using the form available in the leadership.htm file, 
leadership.asp file/ leaderhip perl script file captures all the information from the 
form and integrates it with Structured Query Language (SQL). And then queries 
the database to retrieve the information and process it into the html language which 
the browser understands. The final result of the query can be seen in the (Fig.3). 
See Appendix II for the source the code of the leadership.htm & leadership Perl 
script file 
 
 
 
 
Fig. 2 
Web database: a better solution for organizing………                                           Paper: AF 
 7
 
Fig. 3 
 
Security and Web Server features are not discussed here. Database, SQL interface 
and Scripting language features are also not covered in its full length. However an 
attempt has been made to show how databases can be connected to the web to 
make use of them to organise the internet resources. Web-Database connectivity 
has been increasingly used in all fields of the Internet technology and it is sure that 
Library & Information centers can do a lot more services using this technology.  
 
References 
1. YARGER (Randy Jay), REESE (George) and KING (Tim). MySQL & mSQL. 
O'reilly'99. 
2. CHRISTIANSEN (Tom) and TORKINGTON (Nathan). Perl cookbook.       
O'reilly'98.  
Paper: AF                                                                    Rajeev K. R. & Abdul Jaleel Tharayil 
 8
3. POWERS (Shelly) Developing ASP components. O'reilly'99. 
4. Learnasp.com. http://www.learnasp.com/ 
5. Perlguy Inc. http://www.inlink.com/~perlguy/sql/  
6. Mysql.com. http://mysql.com/ 
7. O'reilly's Perl site. http://perl.oreilly.com/ 
 
 
Appendix I 
Leadership.htm 
 
<html><head><title>Search books</title></head> 
<body BGCOLOR="#FEFCEF" link="#000080" vlink="#000080" alink="#000080"> 
<center><b>Leadership Search Page</b></center> 
<form METHOD="POST" ACTION="http://localhost/library/leadership.asp"> 
<p>Title Keyword:&nbsp;&nbsp<input NAME="title" SIZE="25"><b>OR</b> </dt> 
<p>Subject Keyword: <input NAME="subject" SIZE="15">  
<input TYPE="SUBMIT" value="Submit"><input TYPE="RESET"></dt> 
</form> 
</body> 
</html> 
 
Leadership.asp 
 
<%@ LANGUAGE = VBScript %> 
<html><head> 
<title>Leadership</title> 
</head> 
<body> 
<p><center><b><font size="4">SEARCH RESULTS</font></b></center><p> 
 
<%  
    Set OBJdbConnection = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection") 
    OBJdbConnection.Open "mylibrary"  
      title= Request.Form("title") 
   subject= Request.Form("subject") 
   if title="" and subject="" then 
      norecord 
   else  
   SQLQuery = "SELECT * from leadership WHERE title Like '%"& title 
&"%' OR summery Like '%"& subject &"%';" 
   Set RSleadership = OBJdbConnection.Execute(SQLQuery) 
  
           Do while not RSleadership.Eof  
           counter = counter + 1 
           entereddate = RSleadership("entereddate") 
           newdate = date - entereddate 
%> 
 
<br><% if newdate < 15 then %>  
<font size="1" face="Arial Narrow" color="#FF0000"><b>New&nbsp;</b></font> 
<%end if %> 
<b><%=RSleadership("title")%></b> <br><%=RSleadership("summery")%> 
<br><a href="<%=RSleadership("url")%>"><%=RSleadership("url")%> </a> 
<br><%=RSleadership("entereddate")%><br> 
 
<%   
    RSleadership.MoveNext  
Web database: a better solution for organizing………                                           Paper: AF 
 9
    Loop  
 
       if counter < 1 then 
  norecord 
  end if  
end if 
%> 
 
<% Function norecord %> 
  <P><b> No records found!!! Search again </b> 
<% end function %> 
</body> 
</html> 
 
Appendix II 
 
Leadership.htm 
 
<html><head><title>Search books</title></head> 
<body BGCOLOR="#FEFCEF" link="#000080" vlink="#000080" alink="#000080"> 
<center><b>Leadership Search Page</b></center> 
<form METHOD="POST" ACTION="http://localhost/library/leadership"> 
<p>Title Keyword:&nbsp;&nbsp<input NAME="title" SIZE="25"><b>OR</b> </dt> 
<p>Subject Keyword: <input NAME="subject" SIZE="15">  
<input TYPE="SUBMIT" value="Submit"><input TYPE="RESET"></dt> 
</form> 
</body> 
</html> 
 
Leadership(Perl Script) 
 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w 
use Date::Calc qw(Delta_Days); 
use CGI ':standard';  
use DBI; 
my $mycgi = new CGI; 
$flag=1;  
my $dbh = DBI->connect('DBI:mysql:library:localhost','username','password') or die "$!\n";  
 
%months = ( 
         Jan => "1",  
         Feb => "2",  
         Mar => "3",  
         Apr => "4",  
         May => "5",  
         Jun => "6",  
         Jul => "7",  
         Aug => "8", 
         Sep => "9",  
         Oct => "10",  
         Nov => "11", 
         Dec => "12" 
          );  
 
 
if (param()){ 
    $title = param('title'); 
    $subject = param('subject');  
    print $mycgi->header(); 
    print $mycgi->start_html(-title => "Leadership");  
    $sql = "select * from leadership where title like '%$title%' or subject like '%$subject%' ";  
    my $sth = $dbh->prepare($sql); 
Paper: AF                                                                    Rajeev K. R. & Abdul Jaleel Tharayil 
 10
    $rows = $sth->execute; 
    if ($rows eq '0E0') {  
        $rows = 0; 
        print "<b>", "No records found" ,"</b>","<br>\n";  
                                  } 
    while ($rows){  
        if ($flag==1){ 
        print "<b>","<center>", "Search Results","</center>" ,"</b>", "<br>\n"; 
        } 
        @data = $sth->fetchrow_array(); 
        $title = $data[0]; 
        $subject = $data[1];  
        $url = $data[2]; 
        $date = $data[3];  
        $flag = 0;  
 
         ($dummy,$mm1,$dd1,$dummy,$dummy,$yy1)= split(" ",`date`); 
         ($yy2,$mm2,$dd2) = split("-",$date);  
         $datediff=Delta_Days($yy2,$mm2,$dd2,$yy1,$months{$mm1},$dd1); 
 
         if ($datediff<15) { 
         print "<b><font color=red>New</font></b>\n"; 
         } 
 
         print $title ,"<br>\n";  
         print $subject ,"<br>\n";  
         print "<A HREF='$url'>$url</A> </b> <br>\n"; 
         print $date ,"<br>\n";  
         print "<br>\n";  
         $rows = $rows-1; 
   } 
 
     $sth->finish(); 
     print $mycgi->end_html(); 
} 
 
$dbh->disconnect; 
 
 


Web databases: A better Solution for Organising the Internet Resources

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Web databases: A better Solution for Organising the Internet Resources

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