DB: Browsing Object-Oriented Databases over the Web
Concepción Varela, D. Nekhayev, P. Chandrasekharan, C.N. Krishnan, V. Govindan, D. Modgil, S. Siddiqui, D. Lebedenko, Marianne Winslett · 1995
In this paper, we present critical issues that arise when users browse object-oriented databases over the World Wide Web, and performance results for the Database Browser (DB) implementation. Initially, given the statelessness of HTTP, we introduced a dispatcher-script architecture. In this architecture, a CGI script communicates with an intermediate data server connected to the database application, which keeps the database open for faster future transactions. Second, we used ODL, a standard object-definition language, and defined a simple intermediate data format for moving database objects across the network. Lastly, we defined generic hypertext interfaces for five distinct purposes: a database schema, a class definition, a class query form, a class extent, and a set of class instances. Our implementation used ObjectStore and two database applications: university registration and electronic mailboxes. The DB architecture provided dramatic improvements in performance.