Web Enabling a Bibliographic Database of Indian Biomedical Journals: IndMED

Abstract

The project aims to provide access through web to a bibliographic database called IndMED. The database is a product of Indian Medlars Centre (IMC, a division of National Informatics Centre) and has data relating to references to articles published in India’s learned biomedical journals. The scope of this project is limited to providing a web-based user interface for database searching and developing the CGI for Web-Database Connectivity.

The project was planned to ensure its scheduled completion. A survey of relevant research and technologies pertaining to Web Interface, Web-Database Connectivity and DBMS have been made and briefly described in the dissertation. Interview, Questionnaire and Observation of similar systems were utilized to determine the requirements of the proposed system. Specification of the proposed system was then based on the requirements.

After the requirements and the specification of the proposed system was finalized an Analysis Model consisting of Data Flow Diagrams (DFDs) and Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) was developed. Design of the system was then developed for the sub-systems – Web-Interface, Web-database Connectivity and DBMS - so the requirements and specifications are met. The Web-Interface mainly consists of html pages i.e. Simple Search Form, Minimal Search Form and Advanced Search Form and the dynamically generated by CGI the Search Result Screen. The Web-Database Connectivity sub-system consists of PERL Scripts dealing with Processing of data submitted from html forms, Variables assignment, Error Trap, Formulation of query string which can passed on to the DBMS sub-system and Html Patching of the output of the database in response to the query.

The implementation of the system includes: the screens along with html code written for various search forms and generated by the CGI for the Web-Interface, Perl Scripts (IMSS.PL; IMAS.PL; IMRS.PL) for the CGI and the Database Structure, Fields included in Inverted File Index of the Database and Display Formats for the DBMS sub-system. The system thus developed was tested to meet the tests prescribed by the system specification. The final product has been integrated into the Home-page of IMC at the URL http://indmed.nic.in . A user help document for searching is also included. The system developed has scope for future research and refinement in regard to relevancy ranking, federated searching, links to full text articles and other material relevant to the user query available on the Internet along with the results from IndMED.