WWW.AU

Adding entries ...

New entries are added to the WWW.AU via a forms interface. Anyone can add an entry, although in practice this is mainly done by the owners of the sites and by the maintainer of the index.

Each entry must have a unique URL and this is used as the key field for the index. No two entries in the database can share the same URL. The data entry form also facilitates specifying a password which is needed for amending the entry, a main topic (eg the name of the organisation), a subtopic (eg the name of a department), and a concise description of the site up to a maximum of 256 characters.

Finally, the person adding the entry selects one of the existing categories, and activates the "Add to Index" button. On receipt of the information, the WWW.AU index automatically carries out integrity checking on the fields, and sends back either an acknowledgment showing the entry which has been automatically added to the database, or a message saying that the entry has not been added and listing the problem found in the data. In the latter case, most web browsers allow the user to go back one page to the filled in form, modify the form as required, and resubmit.

Modifying entries ...

An existing entry can be modified by filling in the same form as is used for adding a new entry. In order to modify an existing entry, its same URL must be entered in addition to the password. If these two fields exactly match an entry in the database, then that entry is modified in accordance with the information entered into the other fields.

As with the case of adding a new entry, integrity checking is carried out to ensure that the database is not accidentally updated by an incomplete or wrongly filled in form.

Deleting entries ...

At present, WWW.AU does not provide a form for deleting entries from its database. Although this facility is straightforward to implement, to date there has been little demand for it. However, it is planned to include a deletion form in the course of time.

The main feedback received to date which requires deletions is from users of the index who find that a particular site listed no longer responds to them. However, these users could not use a deletion form anyway as they do not know the password of the offending site. Feedbacks of this nature are acted upon by the maintainer of the index.

The maintainer also occasionally deletes sites to keep the size of the index down, even if the sites are still working. This is done when one site is reachable from another closely related site (usually running on the same host and maintained by the same person), and when it is felt that the description of the closely related site would suggest the existence of the other site to a reasonable user. In other words, the two sites are really one site by the definition given in this paper.

Integrity checking ...

Whenever WWW.AU receives a form with an additional entry or a modification to an existing entry, it automatically carries out some integrity checking to help prevent errors from entering the database. The main elements of the checks are as follows:

Embedded HTML commands are stripped out of all fields.
The URL is parsed and only accepted if the parsing succeeds. Furthermore, the URL must lead to a hypertext document (URL begins with "http://") which is situated in Australia (the domain is ".au").
The main topic (i.e. name of organisation), category, and password fields must be supplied.
The description field is truncated to 256 characters if it is too long.