Approaches To Web Site Development For The 21 st Century Brian Kelly UK Web Focus UKOLN University of Bath Bath, BA2 7AY UKOLN is supported by: URL

2 Why Am I Here? Why have you invited me to Leeds? What do you want to get out of today’s seminar?

3 Contents Where Are We Now? Standards and the Web The Original Web Architecture Architectural Developments Deployment Issues Discussion

4 About Me Brian Kelly: UK Web Focus – a JISC-funded post to advise HE and FE communities on Web developments Based in UKOLN - a national focus of expertise in digital information management based at the University of Bath Involved in Web since 1993, while working in Computing Service at University of Leeds Close links with Computing Service and Library communities

5 The Web At Leeds History 9 Dec 1992 Half-day SIG on network tools (e.g. Gopher, WAIS, etc.) introduced Web (Viola!) to University Jan 1993 UCS installs institutional Web service 1 Mar 1993 Robert Cailliau visits Leeds (see How the Web Was Born) 1993 Early adopters of Web include Admin, Music, Fine Art, Physics, CBL Unit and Computer Science Web used to announce Open Day on 8 May 93 May 1994 WWW 1 conf at CERN By the end of 1994: Web services provided by Arts depts Web used by research community (preprints by Chemistry dept) Web used in teaching & learning (initially in Chemistry, then Web wins TLTP shootout) Web used for admin and marketing Involvement in Web research (Andrew Cole et al) Central support from UCS Political support from PVC-IT By the end of 1994: Web services provided by Arts depts Web used by research community (preprints by Chemistry dept) Web used in teaching & learning (initially in Chemistry, then Web wins TLTP shootout) Web used for admin and marketing Involvement in Web research (Andrew Cole et al) Central support from UCS Political support from PVC-IT

6 What Happened? Exploitation By the mid 1990s Leeds University was in a position to exploit the potential of the Web Did it? If not, why not? The UCS The PVCs The SLAs & the funding model Failure of communications Lack of strategic thinking Personalities involved Are you likely to make the same mistakes again? Other reasons Who Was To Blame? The users

7 The Web At Leeds Today ExerciseResult Nos. of Web servers115 Nos. of pages indexed by AV34,932 Size of entry point30.93 Kb (Bobby) 70,309 b (NetMechanic) Nos. of links to main Web site21,561 Nos. of links to all sites431,172 Site accessibility Accessibility issues … Benchmarking Results For Leeds Numbers may be interesting, but are more useful when (a) measured over time and (b) compared with peers (e.g. other Yorkshire Univs). See for comparisons See for above results

8 Look Back at Web Conferences W3C Advisory Committee Meeting – June 1998 Held at CERN, Switzerland W3C staff and AC Reps (from computing companies) using mobile phone and laptop for Internet access during talks WWW9 Conference – May 2000 Laptop and mobile, digital cameras are mainstream (e.g. Weblogs for realtime trip reports) WWW10 Conference – May 2001 Wireless LANs and laptops Web access pervasive (free 5 mins at Heathrow, unlimited access throughout Hong Kong – shopping malls, cafes, etc)

9 About Our Community Shared Concerns XML File formats What’s happening to HTML? Maintenance When is it going to stabilise? Content Management Systems Performance Resources Authoring Tools Web browsers Netscape or Microsoft? Web Standards Web Applications Web Services Open source vs licensed apps Database Integration Leeds University is not alone – as can be seen from the themes addressed at annual Web Management workshop Strategies Intranets

10 Where Are We Now? Current position: Awareness that resource management is critical? Integration with legacy systems? E-learning and e-business seen as important? But: Have we yet grasped importance of pervasive networking? Is our institutional decision-making processes hindering developments? Will we lose out to:  Microsoft.net (or Sun’s ONE) and Web services  Harvard-online, MIT-online, etc.  Student Web sites, or Web services aimed at students Are we still too institution-centric, and missing out on distributed “Web services”?

11 Standards, Architectures, Applications, Resources This talk touches on several areas Architectures: models for implementing systems Applications: software products used to implement systems Standards: concerned with protocols and file formats Open standards vs. Proprietary HTML / XML vs. PDF CSS / XSL vs. HTML Which standards are applicable NT / Unix File system / database application HTML tools / content management Apache / IIS FrontPage / Dreamweaver Oracle / SQLServer ColdFusion vs ASP Development vs. Migration costs Use of in-house expertise In-house vs. out-sourced Licensed vs. open source Resources and Strategies: financial & staff costs, prioritisation

12 How Does The Web Work? The Web has 3 fundamental concepts: URLs: addresses of resources HTTP: dialogue between client and server HTML: format of resources The Netsoft home page 1User clicks on link to the address (URL) netsoft.com/hello.html 2Browser converts link to HTTP command (METHOD): Connect to computer at GET /hello.html 3Remote computer sends file Welcome.. Welcome to Netsoft Welcome to Netsoft 4Local computer displays HTML file Web Browser (client) Web server

13 Acronym Soup The W3C acronym factory is very productive! XML XML Schemas RDF RDF Schemas SVG SMIL PNG WSDL UDDI SOAP DOI URI CC/PP CSS XSLT DOM XLink XPointer HTML XHTML RSS WML ECMAScript XML Family Rendering HTML/XML WebCGM Metadata Framework XML Apps MathML Graphics Family Identifiers Web Services Oversimplified Not all are W3C Will not cover all! Oversimplified Not all are W3C Will not cover all! URL

14 Approaches To HTML Emphasis on managing HTML resources inappropriate: HTML is an output format, which cannot easily be reused (e.g. WAP, e-Books, etc.) Need to manage HTML fragments (only partly achievable with SSIs) Need to manage collections of resources Need to have single master source of data Need to support new developments such as personalisation Difficult to integrate with new formats Issues Should we stop giving HTML courses? Should we stop buying HTML authoring tools? Issues Should we stop giving HTML courses? Should we stop buying HTML authoring tools?

15 The CMS To The Rescue A CMS (Content Management System): Allows fragments to be managed Allows collections to be managed Allows resources to be stored in a neutral format (backend database) Allows resources to be reused Often provides access control Often provides workflow processes and project management Issues CMS can be expensive CMS can be free but have support implications Which one to choose? Issues CMS can be expensive CMS can be free but have support implications Which one to choose?

16 Standards Need for standards to provide: Platform independence Application independence Avoidance of patented technologies Flexibility ("evolvability" - Tim Berners-Lee) Architectural integrity Long-term access to data Ideally look at standards first, then find applications which support the standards Difficult to achieve this ideal!

17 XML XML: Extensible Markup Language A lightweight SGML designed for network use Addresses HTML's lack of evolvability Arbitrary elements can be defined (,, etc) Agreement achieved quickly - XML 1.0 became W3C Recommendation in Feb 1998 Support from industry (SGML vendors, Microsoft, etc.) Support in latest versions of Web browsers

18 XML Concepts Well-formed XML resources: Make end-tags explicit:... Make empty elements explicit: Quote attributes <img src="logo.gif" height="20" Use consistent upper/lower case XML Namespaces: Mechanism for ensuring unique XML elements : Insert M-471 There are several other XML goodies, such as XLink, XPointer, XSLT, etc which aren’t covered in this talk

19 XHTML XHTML: Extensible Hypertext Markup Language HTML represented in XML Some small changes to HTML: –Elements in lowercase ( not ) –Attributes must be quoted ( –Elements must be closed (.. ) –Empty elements must be closed ( ) Gain benefits from XML Tools available (e.g. HTML-Kit from ) See, and

20 Position Today What should we be doing today? Move away from creating new content in HTML Move to XHTML as part of the migration Deploying XML applications Storing structured information in a neutral database Using a CMS to manage our content Deploying B2B applications to avoid human bottleneck (such as RSS, …) Note that these are aspirations. We will, of course, be constrained by existing systems, resource implications, vested interests, inertia, etc.

21 RSS – Automated News Feeds RSS (Rich / RDF Site Summary): Now an RDF application Used for news feeds Lightweight approach we should be investigating UKOLN RSS tool at. Note this service uses CGI – a JavaScript solution is also being developed. See for exercises. UKOLN RSS tool at. Note this service uses CGI – a JavaScript solution is also being developed. See for exercises.

22 Model For News Feeds Good For User The end user can choose her news feeds, including local news, news from JISC services and news from third parties Good For Service The service can chose its own information flow model. Its news is disseminated automatically. Good For User The end user can choose her news feeds, including local news, news from JISC services and news from third parties Good For Service The service can chose its own information flow model. Its news is disseminated automatically. RSS Institution (e.g. Bath) RSS Community (e.g. MIDAS) RSS External (e.g. BBC) Local News.. JISC News.. National News XHTML converted to RSS Structured database converted to RSS Zope CMS outputs to RSS & XHTML

23 What About Tomorrow? Two interesting areas: The Semantic Web Will allow intelligent agents to know about resources AI and ontologists meet the Web Uses RDF (Resource Description Framework) – W3C’s framework for metadata Some concerns over scale of problem See Web Services One of the highlights of the recent WWW10 conference

24 Web Services The Web: Initially used for viewing static resources Then interactive services built (e.g. e-learning) We now want: Programmable Web services which can be used by other Web services using standards Web protocols We have experience of the first generation of externally-hosted Web services (stats services, voting systems, etc.) - see. The next generation will be programmable and machine- understandable Note that concerns over outsourcing may be an issue We have experience of the first generation of externally-hosted Web services (stats services, voting systems, etc.) - see. The next generation will be programmable and machine- understandable Note that concerns over outsourcing may be an issue

25 Example Some examples at gotdotnet.com : Mailsender Thumbnail Generator Concepts been around for some time (see Auditing & Evaluating Web Sites workshop) Now being standardised (UDDI, WSDL, …) services/thumbnailgen.aspx

26 We’ve Been Here Before Reusable components available on the network: Sounds like COM/DCOM, CORBA, etc. for reusable program components Reusable network services: Sounds like JISCmail, RDN, EDINA, MIMAS, BIDS, Mirror Service and other JISC Services Web Services And UK HE / FE Communities Sounds like a great idea: We’ve the organisational framework to develop national services (JISC, etc.) We’ve got the network We’ve a community which is willing to exploit centrally-provided services and wants to avoid reinventing the wheel (haven’t we?) Web Services And UK HE / FE Communities Sounds like a great idea: We’ve the organisational framework to develop national services (JISC, etc.) We’ve got the network We’ve a community which is willing to exploit centrally-provided services and wants to avoid reinventing the wheel (haven’t we?)

27 Currently... End user Local contentNational contentInternational content Web We should be moving away from providing separate Web services with their own interfaces … How many local Web servers?

28 Currently... End user Collection Description (e.g. Agora) User Profile (e.g. Headline) Authentication (Athens) Local contentNational contentInternational content Web … and separate metadata repositories and access services (which are sometimes centralised) … Agora and headline are eLib Hybrid libraries

29 Future... Content End user User profile Collection description Authentication Metadata Services / Access Services Application Services Bookmarks Spell- checker.. and move to Web-accessible, machine-understandable Web services as well as seamless access to content Brokered access provide by institutional portal (MLE, …)

30 Thoughts on Applications Today: Dreamveaver vs FrontPage vs … Another Approach: Web-based authoring / CMS tools (e.g. Manilla, etc.)

31 Thoughts on Architectures XML RDBMS XSLT Scripts Export functions XHTML WML Open-Ebooks PDF … RSS RDF HERO DTD SVG IMS SMIL … Formats for devices used by end users Formats for reuse by other applications

32 Thoughts On Collaboration Some thoughts on collaboration: You can’t do it all on your own Attendance at Institutional Web Management Workshop may be useful Are there regional meetings for Web Managers? Benchmarking exercise and followup discussions might be useful in a regional context Some thoughts on national initiatives: Make sure you exploit deliverables from JISC and other national initiatives Look to participate in national initiatives

33 Conclusions To conclude: HTML won’t do the job XHTML is a useful transition We’ll need a CMS to manage richly functional institutional Web services Web services should be important – and we shouldn’t be too concerned about using remote services Standards are important You can’t do it all yourself!

34 Discussion Time for questions and general discussion