ISWORLD
Net Marius Dano, formerly of School of Information Systems, University of South Australia, now with Anderson Consulting Melbourne Vic Email: Marius_Dano@ac.com
This paper documents the structure of the ISWORLD Net Research Working Paper Series [HREF2], a mechanism for disseminating research in progress and research prior to publication. The working paper series is part of ISWORLD Net [HREF3]a virtual organisation which aims to provide a single entry point to resources for scholars and practitioners in the information systems field.
It also shows the interaction between Web pages, forms, CGI programs (Visual Basic) and databases (Microsoft Access) used to create the series.
ISWORLD
Net ISWORLD Net [HREF3]is a 'virtual' organisation that was started in July 1994 by Blake Ives [HREF4] from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, USA It has the following mission:
"We will provide information management scholars and practitioners with a single entry point to resources related to information systems technology and promote the development of an international information infrastructure that will dramatically improve the world's ability to use information systems for creating, disseminating, and applying knowledge." HREF5
The characteristics of this organisation are similar to that of other organisations, except that it does not exist in any particular physical location. Instead it is made up of numerous people with their computers connected via the Internet and using the World Wide Web. It has a mission statement, objectives, policies, a board and many of the other characteristics of a 'traditional' organisation. [HREF3]
It is a voluntary organisation where anyone from around the world can contribute to its development.
To coordinate the vast amount of information available on ISWORLD Net it has been organised into divisions. These are:
These divisions and the services provided are not located centrally on a single computer, rather they may reside on many computers scattered around the world. The ISWorld Net home page (but not the divisions) is mirrored on three sites in USA [HREF10], Ireland [HREF10] and Australia [HREF3]
Together ISWORLD Net provides a powerful information system to academics and students, who now have the ability to access IS related resources quickly and effectively. Part of this system is the ISWORLD Research Working Paper Series [HREF2] a department in the Research and Scholarship Division.
The aims of the ISWORLD Net Research Working Paper Series are:
To achieve these aims it was decided that
A important requirement was to make the operation and administration of the Series as effective and efficient as possible. This was accomplished by using Web forms, CGI programs, and databases making it possible:
The development of this automated mechanism is described below in more detail.
The structure of the Series is separated into two parts. These are:
The first provides information on the ISWORLD Net Series, including hypertext links to those papers in electronic format that have been submitted to the Series.
The second provides a list of other IS related working paper series in existence around the world, and where possible direct hypertext links to them.
The structure of the site is shown in Figure 1. The blue lines indicate the hypertext links between the Web pages and the red lines indicate the data flow to and from the CGI programs.
Figure 1 Structure
The first level consists of the entry point or home page for the Series. This is a static Web page which aims to provide links to the rest of the Series' documents, and provide general information to the users of this facility.
Level two is made up of one static and two dynamic Web pages. It is important to note the difference as only the static page can be effectively manually edited using a standard text or HTML editor. This static page provides guidance to authors on what information on papers to submit and how to submit it.
The two dynamic pages within this level are produced by CGI programs. One contains the list of papers in the ISWORLD Series and the second lists other IS related working paper series. These pages are recreated when a new entry to the ISWORLD Paper Series or to the Other Paper Series is made, thereby providing up to date information on the Web. As these pages are created by CGI programs, it is necessary to edit the source code of the CGI programmes, recompile it, and then run the recompiled CGI programs to effectively edit the Web pages.
Level three provides a mechanism for authors to submit details of their papers, or to add links to existing IS related series to the system. It consists of two forms:
[Note: It is possible to submit details of hard copy papers just by leaving the optional fields blank]
[Note: Once again it is possible to add a hardcopy based series not accessible on the Web, just by leaving the optional fields blank]
When either form is filled out and submitted, the entries to the above fields are sent to the Web server.
Level four contains Common Gateway Interface (CGI) programs. The way these interact with the Web server and the databases is described in more detail in the Appendix.
As the Figure 1 indicates, there are in all two CGI programs and two supporting Visual Basic programs.
A CGI programme (Visual Basic)
The second programme reads every record within the working papers database and creates a new HTML text file, which lists those records.
Within the Other Paper Series section there are similar functions. A programme:
A Microsoft Access database has been used to store the submitted information on the papers within the ISWORLD Series. A similar MS Access database is used to store information in relation to the Other Paper Series.
Information such as the date of the submission and the IP address of the submitting client are also being collected in both databases to provide extra future functionality to the site if required.
While this the Series is still in an early stage of development a number of issues have been raised. The main issue concerns one of the design criteria that papers would reside on authors' servers. This causes problems with:
Another issue is the question of removal of papers from the series. That is, should papers always be available (ie a full archival series) or should they be removed either after a specified time or on the authors request?
The future enhancements to the series will be
The WWW is providing a mechanism for the development of virtual organisations. One such organisation is ISWorld Net. This paper presents one of the initiatives of ISWorld Net the development of a mechanism for disseminating research in progress and research prior to publication; the ISWORLD Net Research Working Paper Series. The series uses the WWW as a way of quickly making research available to a world wide audience.
In conclusion it is perhaps appropriate to emphasise the potential of the technology described here. By developing CGI programs which interact with external applications, one is no longer limited to using the WWW as just a publishing tool, but is able to utilise it as an open platform, on-line, real time information system accessible to the world. (The ultimate "open system"?)
Ford, A. (1995), "Spinning the Web: How to Provide Information on the Internet", Thompson Publishing, London.
Peck, S.B. & Mui, L. (1995) "Building your own WebSite", O'Reilly & Associates, Sebastopol.
CGI programs can be written in almost any programming language, but C and C++ seem to be the most commonly used. However we had expertise in using Microsoft Visual Basic and Microsoft Access and thus a strong preference for using these tools for the CGI programming and database respectively.
This however posed a problem as CGI programs have to be able to accept the environment variable that the Web server is passing it. In C or C++ this is done using the STDIN () and STDOUT () functions. However VB has no such functions and therefore no interface for environment variables. This problem was resolved by purchasing a Web server (Website [HREF12]). that provided specific support for CGI programs using Visual Basic source code thus making environment variable handling with Visual Basic possible.
The CGI programmes used in the ISWORLD Net Research Working Paper Series were written in Visual Basic Professional Edition (v 3.0) and the data stored in Microsoft Access databases.
The interaction between Web browsers, Web servers, CGI programs and external programs such as databases is shown in Figure 2
. 
Fig 2: The CGI Model
David Sutton, Marius Dano © 1996. The authors assigns to Southern Cross University and other educational and non-profit institutions a non-exclusive licence to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The authors also grant a non-exclusive licence to Southern Cross University to publish this document in full on the World Wide Web and on CD-ROM and in printed form with the conference papers, and for the document to be published on mirrors on the World Wide Web. Any other usage is prohibited without the express permission of the author.
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