A WWW Front End to an OODBMS

The prototype generates HTML documents on the fly from information pieces in the database. A document's logical structure is described by a simple grammar, as well as where in the database the different parts of the logical structure should be retrieved.

We can use LINCKS for tracking owner, source, and creation date of information pieces and documents. Instead of using ``copy-and-paste'' for information duplication, we are using links to the real source and thus maintain trace-ability.

Moreover, by applying different views to the same document root object we are able to provide: abstract; table of contents (of different levels); a chapter, a section, or a subsection; the full article; with or without footnotes; or any combination of the above.

Using any of the current crops of server (CERN, NCSA, Plexus, etc) we must create several different files for each of these views. These files must be created by hand or created by a program like 2HTML [Dra94] which makes it yet more difficult to maintain the documents.

This article is available at html or in postscript.