Functional Composition of Web Databases

摘要

This paper proposes the architecture of the functional composition of Web databases (WebDBs). Unlike a general search engine which receives keywords and returns a list of URLs, a WebDB receives a complex query and returns a list of records. The complex query specifies the condition of each field of the records. The process of composing WebDBs is described as a script, where a user chooses the target WebDBs and describes how to connect the output from one WebDB to the input of another WebDB and how to generate outputs. The novelty of the proposal is that both the WebDBs and output formats are considered as components of the same level and that the reuse of new keywords is represented as a connection (CGI links). Once the process is described as a script, the user can use the script for a new WebDB of his own.