Mosaic as Corporate Data Collector and Dispenser
Chris Prah, TASC - The Analytic Sciences Corporation
Diane DiGiovanni, TASC - The Analytic Sciences Corporation
Abstract
While the power of Mosaic as an internet data retriever is apparent, it is
also a convenient and intuitive mechanism for local data distribution and
collection within a corporate environment. Private corporate information can
be protected and distributed to users possessing the appropriate rights,
whereas nonprivate information can be distributed to everyone.
Corporate security
constraints force many organizations to construct firewalls that
prohibit system access to outsiders - those people whose IP addresses
fall outside the
corporate umbrella. Firewalls block outsider access but do not limit access
to the WWW for those inside the firewall. As such, Mosaic-client/server systems
that provide and collect internal corporate data as well as providing WWW access
can be easily built and securely deployed.
This paper focuses on the development of
enterprise wide client/server systems under this type of configuration.
Our paper, while discussing the data presentation capabilities of Mosaic, will focus on the abilities
of Mosaic to receive data via input screens utilizing Forms.
Introduction
The deployment of client/server applications is increasing for many
reasons, one of which being the
the utilization of the clients cpu and native display
device. Introduction of the client software onto the client machine
is very labor intensive to install and maintain as many client machines
have different physical configurations (CPU, memory) and
even more disparate software environments. Very generally, support
for client/server
environments requires about one support staff for every 20 clients in those
facilities having more than a few client/server applications.
Mosaic offers a very practical and viable alternative as it is a client
that can be used to run many client/server applications.
As such, deployment of client/server applications only requires development
of the Mosaic-centric server software.
This allows development time and startup costs
to be minimized - the client, Mosaic, is already coded and deployed on
the three major client environments, MS Windows, XWindows, and Macintosh.
Almost all efforts can be devoted to server side coding and since
many developers are already versed in larger platform development,
coding and testing time is kept low. Basically, Mosaic allows the
deployment of client/server applications without the need to develop,
code, and test the client software.
One of Mosaic's greatest strengths is its intuitive user interface
that allows self proclaimed computer illiterates to navigate the
internet with minimal or no instruction at all. We've used
this readily accepted interface not just to dispense corporate
information but also to gather corporate information.
The Marketing/Proposal Research System
Our recently developed Marketing/Proposal Resource System (MPRS) is an
information retrieval system
that gives our proposal writers access to relevant information necessary
to develop competitive government and commercial proposals.
It is based on
"information bases" of various kinds of significant data.
An information base is a collection of related texts (like TASC staff resumes)
that have been processed to allow full-text search and retrieval of its
contents. This method is much more powerful for such a system than are
traditional relational databases because the data in an information base can be
arbitrary in size and structure while still allowing powerful
(and easily formed) queries against its contents.
This system uses the Wide Area Information Server (WAIS) as its text retrieval
engine and local hypertext browsers (Mosaic and Lynx) as tools to access
the WAIS information bases. The hypertext browsers allow users to navigate
to various locations in the MPRS and to issue queries against the WAIS
information bases.
The MPRS also allows users to download files in their native format to their
local computers for
editing and inclusion in other texts.
MPRS Data Sets
The MPRS consists of seven data sets generated from disparate corporate sources.
Some of the data has been deemed secure and requires userids and passwords to
access (we use the http security mechanism to implement this requirement).
Here is a list of the data found in the MPRS and a brief description of
the process flow and data formats of each data set.
Non-Secure Data
- Commerce Business Dailies
- Data file received daily over the internet from 3rd party vendor
- File parsed by a Perl script into suitable format
- Loaded into WAIS databases for querying
- TASC Facility Descriptions
- Native format is Interleaf
- Converted into WorldView and ASCII format once a week
- ASCII loaded into WAIS for querying; WorldView format returned
- TASC's Library Holdings
- Data extracted from corporate (Bibliotech) library system weekly
- Parsed and loaded into WAIS databases for querying
- TASC Products and Services
- Native format Interleaf and Word
- Converted into WorldView, RTF, and HTML
Secure Data
- Employee Resumes
- Each employee updates resume when appropriate, at least once a year
- Searchable WAIS database updated weekly
- Resumes can be accessed in HTML and RTF formats
- Non-submitters notified when tardy
- TASC Project Descriptions
- Native format RTF, Word, and ASCII
- Employee supplied information merged with corporate data
- Convtered into RTF and HTML
- Proposal Information
- Collection of corporate data from various internal systems
- Combined into searchable RTF and HTML file
MPRS Data Update Process
A data update cycle occurs weekly which gathers data from various corporate
machines for processing and incorporation into WAIS databases. Employee
submitted data is merged with corporate data where appropriate, files are
processed into suitable format for incorporation to the WAIS databases,
reports indicating data problems are produced, and the WAIS databases are
rebuilt with the fresh data.
The Approach
The MPRS is a collection of distinct subsystems containing somewhat
related information.
Providing a consistent and uniform data interface throughout these subsystems
was a main objective in the
design process. Data is presented and gathered from via Mosaic Forms, which
are built from data received
from Common Gateway Interface (CGI) Perl scripts accessing WAIS databases.
The idea was to create a comfortable interface in forms, allowing
users easy access to data and the ability to automate many functions. We will
discuss one of the subsystems, the CBD system, in more detail.
CBD's
The CBD subsystem is updated every business day with new CBD's received from
a vendor via the internet. We receive one file containing all CBD's and
proceed to parse it into files that fall into three data categories:
procurements, awards, and special notices. There
are three groups of data: daily, weekly, and total. To avoid duplicate
entries in the WAIS database, these groups are disjoint. As such there are
nine WAIS databases that house the CBD information (three categories by three
groups).
Users can query any or all of these WAIS databases simultaneously via
forms built by Perl routines. These programs have error checking routines
that validate whether the form has been properly filled out. If not, a
kindly worded error message is displayed on the form where the error
occurred.
As an example, here is the form presented to users wishing to enter the
CBD subsystem:
CBD System