The rapid growth of the internet in the past few years has revitalised the database industry. The volume of data being made accessible on the web has grown beyond expectations, while users are demanding more and more efficient ways of locating the information they require. This has resulted in many organisations using databases to provide the data repository for their web servers thus creating dynamic web pages on request.
This tutorial will explain the technologies for making databases accessible over the web, from CGI, to the need for Java, JDBC and distributed object technology. We will also discuss the role that federated databases can play in the area of solving the problem of querying a growing number of databases on the net.
The tutorial will be aimed at software developers who wish to develop client/server style applications on the internet using a database backend. Experience in Java programming, or another suitable object-oriented language is required and some knowledge of relational databases would be helpful, but is not essential.
Mark Papiani joined the Parallel and Distributed Computing Research Group at the University of Southampton as a research assistant in 1994. He is currently researching a PhD in the area of federated database access from the Web, and also lectures Java within the department. He was previously employed as a principal hardware design engineer at Siemens Plessey (1990-94) and as a computer programmer for Barclays Bank (1984-86), where he implemented software for OLTP systems. He graduated from the University of Southampton in 1990 with a BEng in Electrical Engineering.