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

1. A Prototype Implementation of a Framework for Organising Virtual Exhibitions over the Web Ali Elbekai, Nick Rossiter School of Computing, Engineering and information sciences Northumbria University Email: ali.elbekai@unn.ac.uk , nick.rossiter@unn.ac.uk

2. Overview • Related Work • Prototype of Museum System • Architecture of System • Implementation of System

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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)

8. 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

9. Figure 1: Entity Relationship Diagram for the Museum System

10. 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

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

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

13. 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

14. 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

15. Figure 4: Architecture for the museum system

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. Figure 5 Institutional information displayed

22. Figure 6 Institutional Information displayed on Tomcat server

23. Figure 7: Search and display objects

24. Figure 8: Objects displayed by the Client on Tomcat Server

25. Figure 9: Search and display information

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

27. Figure 11: Search and display information

28. Figure 12: Opening exhibition information on Tomcat Server

29. 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.

30. 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.