Abstract

This thesis presents the design and implementation of the CINDI System based on the World Wide Web. The CINDI (Concordia INdexing and DIscovery) is a system which enables a user to index and discover information resources on the Internet. The information resource is described using a metadata called a Semantic Header, which is stored in a distributed databases management system; it is distributed for reliability and availability. The Semantic-Header is replicated at different nodes of the Internet. The locations of such nodes are stored in a database catalog. A prototype has been developed based on this proposal. The prototype is composed of three main subsystems: the Web Server, which also hosts the catalog database, a primary site for the Semantic Header and subject databases, and a replicated site. In the prototype, UML (Unified Modeling Language) has been employed for the analysis and design of the CINDI system using Oracle Database Management System for its implementation. The Apache Web Server is used to communicate between the Browser (the client) and the Databases (the server) subsystems using the HTTP protocol. This communication is implemented using Java servlets which have two main functions. They are used as server to retrieve the HTML form information from the browser, and as client to send requests to Oracle databases.