Computer Networks and ISDN Systems
The Aquarelle resource discovery system
Section snippets
Objectives
Many types of resources are made available through the Internet: structured documents (e.g. SGML documents), textual documents with a relatively weak structure (e.g. HTML pages), unstructured texts (e.g. postscript or pdf files, character files), database records, and various kinds of files containing images, sounds, graphics, etc., which can be considered as unstructured as far as information retrieval is concerned.
A resource discovery system (RDS) is a facility offered to end-users to help
The application domain
Aquarelle aims at designing an information system enabling professionals to share across European borders cultural information related to paintings, sculptures, historical sites and monuments, musical instruments and furniture. The Web is more and more used by museums and cultural organisations for broadcasting cultural contents (see for instance the sites of the Louvre [1] or Uffizi [2]), as well as for exchanging cultural information at an international level. Current Web technology provides
Relationship to other work
A number of tools are available to facilitate discovery of resources. The most widely used fall into three categories: search-services, which are based on centralised automatic full-text indexing of textual files, content-routing systems, which are based on some content labelling to assist the gathering of information from content-servers without downloading the entire documents, and subject-based directories based on some manual classification of a collection of digital resources.
Search
Methodology
Aquarelle aims at providing an information retrieval service for searching across different database systems with different data architectures. It does this by presenting the user with a common vocabulary, including a set of access points for the purpose of phrasing a query. The Aquarelle cultural partners (content-producers) use over 300 fields to store the data in their respective databases [34]. Individual databases may use over one hundred different ones to store the information at the
Architecture and functionality of Aquarelle
The architecture of the Aquarelle Information System is shown in Fig. 1. At the logical level, it is composed of:
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Two user applications which will support all interaction with the end-user. The first one is an “off-the-shelf” Web browser (e.g. Netscape 3 or later), and the second one is a SGML editor and browser, used as a “helper application” of the Web browser, with some added specific functionality for publishing SGML documents on the system.
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An access server, which is offered to a user as the
Information retrieval process description
Fig. 2 indicates how queries and responses are handled:
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The users, at their workstations, are presented with an HTML form. They can formulate their query by filling in fields on the form, where the access points are implied by the selection of fields. Alternatively, they can use a conventional query language, where the access points are given explicitly.
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The form is submitted by HTTP and interpreted by CGI scripts in the User Client module. This converts the query to the Aquarelle Query Language
Open issues
Sticking to the Access-Point flat view of information, we discuss in this section how to improve (i) the functionality of the access-server, (ii) the user-interface, and (iii) access to the data servers. Fig. 3 illustrates some of these short-range improvements which are compatible with the current Aquarelle architecture.
Acknowledgements
Aquarelle is a European Project in which 22 different organisations actively participate. In addition to the authors who have directly contributed to the present paper, we would like to acknowledge the highly valuable contribution of P. Bonhomme (Inria), C. Bounne (Grif s.a.), V. Bouthors (Bull), P. Carrara (CNR-ITIM), D. Dawson (Museum Documentation Association), M. Döerr (ICS-FORTH), F. Malézieux (Euroclid), A. Marrara (Finsiel), M. Padula (CNR-ITIM), S. Piperidis (ILSP), A. Rizk (Euroclid),
Alain Michard is research director at INRIA. His research background is in design of real-time monitoring systems, user-interface management systems, and ergonomics of user-interfaces. From 1991 to 1995 he was executive director of the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM). Since 1995 he is head of the Mediaculture laboratory at INRIA, and manager of the Aquarelle project.Vassilis Christophides studied Electrical Engineering at the National Technical University of
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Alain Michard is research director at INRIA. His research background is in design of real-time monitoring systems, user-interface management systems, and ergonomics of user-interfaces. From 1991 to 1995 he was executive director of the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM). Since 1995 he is head of the Mediaculture laboratory at INRIA, and manager of the Aquarelle project.Vassilis Christophides studied Electrical Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens, Greece (NTUA). He received his DEA in computer science from the Paris VI University and his Ph.D. from the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers (CNAM) of Paris, France. From 1992 until 1996 he did his research work at the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA) in the area of Object Database and Documents Management Systems. His main interests are query languages and optimization techniques for loosely structured documents repositories, using database and information retrieval technologies, as well as Internet-based Information Systems with the focus on uniform access and integration of heterogeneous information spread across a number of distributed sources. He is currently researcher at the Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (ICS-FORTH) and visiting professor at the Computer Science Department of Crete University, Heraklion, Greece.Michel Scholl is Professor of Computer Science at Conservatioire National Des Arts et Métiers (CNAM), Paris, France, and Scientific Advisor at INRIA, Rocquencourt, France. His research interests focus on spatial databases and their application to Geographical Information Systems and on document and textual databases and their application to cultural heritage information integration systems.Mike Stapleton is the Technical Director of System Simulation He is a graduate of Imperial College, London, the London Institute of Computer Science and the Royal College of Art. He developed his interests in computer graphics and user-interface design at the Royal College of Art and at the NERC's Experimental Cartography Unit. Since joining SSL in 1978 he has worked on a wide variety of projects, leading the development of the company's information management software systems and applying these in a wide range of areas in the heritage sector and elsewhere.
Mike Stapleton was for some time Reader and Industrial Associate at Bournemouth University and has also been an examiner at Middlesex University for MSc courses in multi-media systems and computer animation. He chaired a panel of the BSI committee responsible for the British effort in developing computer graphics standards and has represented the UK in this capacity at ISO meetings.