Report of fourth Belnet Workgroup on Informationsystems meeting
Date: May 23rd, 1995
Place: DWTC/SSTC Wetenschapsstraat 8, 1040 Brussel / Rue de la Science 8, 1040 Bruxelles
Present
Hans Arents, Bernd Feyen, Wim Holemans, Nils Meulemans, Anne-Mie Vandermeeren,
Patrick Van Ouplines, Peter Van Rossem, Herman Van Uytven, Viviane Vermeiren
Present from Belnet SST
Peter Raeymaekers (afternoon)
Excused
Lode De Raedt, Omer D'Hondt, Xavier Gillo, Paul Nieuwenhuysen, Geert Peeraer
Table of contents
- Introduction new members
- Report of previous meeting
- Review Agenda
- Reports of conferences
- Belnet status
- Work package 1: Information servers
- Work package 2: Search tools
- Work package 3: Subject lists
- Other items and next meeting
Bernd Feyen from RUCA has joined the workgroup. Welcome Bernd.
No report was available. Peter Van Rossem will contact Michel Debar
and ask him to send the report of the morning of the previous meeting
to Nils. Nils will make the report of the afternoon.
Peter Van Rossem will send the reports from old meetings to Geert Peeraer.
Report of this meeting will be made by Peter Van Rossem. A secretary
will be chosen at the start of each meeting.
- Solo - front-end search system - presentation will be postponed
(item 4 - Presentations - on the agenda is dropped)
- National registration will be added to point 7 (becomes 6 in this report)
- several discussions took place on security aspects: netscape (NSL) vs SLL
- http evolution: a new form is being studied to have
faster access to documents, by including http info in the first packages
- the connection attempts - that are sent over the network, vs
currently first connecting and then asking to send documents
- 3D modeling: is quite nice but no browsers are available yet
- Hot Java got very positive responses
- NSCA server: the next version will be hyper-G, that
uses separate databases for documents and links
- evolution of HTML: instead of directly going to
html 3.0, an intermediate version 2.1 will be developed that contains
some frequently used extensions (like tables)
- discussions took place of SGM (intelligent documents)
- a report on the Darmstadt conference was also sent to the mailinglist by Wim
- chase: Wim Holemans will send some URL to the mailinglist
The conference was special in such a way that the participants were asked
to read the papers before the actual conference. A selection of items then
was chosen from the papers to be discussed in group, under the guidance of
a moderator.
The problem was that not all participants had read the paper, so the
writer of the paper was asked to give a very short resume of the paper
itself before being discussed.
However, the selection of topics was as such that mostly the usual items
were being discussed.
Future developments in hypertext are
- a server ID and local variables will be stored by the servers themselves
- CCI: Commom client interface: the server instructs the client to fetch
documents a link viewer: to fetch links.
All User Committees held thus far only discussed the preparation of
the next User Forum. The date has been set to September 13th 1995,
but no actuals plans are determined; possibilities include a panel
discussion, an presentation of each Belnet workgroup and demonstrations
on several topics. Further details are currently unknown.
As the meetings of the User Committee only handle topics that are not
too relevant to the activities of the workgroup(s), this workgroup has
decided that no representative of the workgroup will be sent to the User
Committee until discussions in the UC will be better determinated and
more relevant.
Peter Raeymaekers explains
- services: an FTP server is being set up, including mirroring;
archie is functional, but not yet complete
- new personnel will join the current Belnet team; the task for
them has not yet been determined
- user committee: too little feedback is given
- search engines: Peter Raeymaekers is studying the matter and
will work on it
- search tools: until now, Yoeri Apts has kept a page with the
different search tools up to date. Peter Van Rossem will ask
Omer D'Hondt if he takes over.
The workgroup has expressed their wish to develop a more functional
Belnet home-page, as for instance it is current quite difficult to
find the home-pages of the workgroups. Bernd Feyen has been asked to
make a proposal, and add this one to the home-page of the WG-IS.
Wish list of the workgroup:
- more functional home-page for Belnet
- Introduction to Belnet; its structure, status, goal, ...
- services is what Belnet offers as services, not the network
servers like archie/news/ftp
- an 'If your looking for ...' page
- clear home-page of the workgroups
[ Bernd Feyen will make a proposal ]
- indexes on Belnet (Belgian?) FTP server(s)
- possibility to sort archie results to give Belgian servers first ?
- a more functional way of finding FAQ's, and indexes on FAQ's
- veronica server
- WWW indexes for Belgian pages
As Nils pointed out before this meeting, an Australian Registration
Program has a quite sophisticated manner of registering WWW sites (and
others), with a very ingenious program behind it. For an example, see
http://www.sofcom.com.au/WWW.AU/
Nils also contacted the authors to find out if the software is more
publicly available. The answer being positive, we await the reception
of the program to use it for our national registration of WWW sites (and
others).
The program will first be set up as a test, but if it functions correctly,
it will be installed on a Belnet server, and the registration can be done
at Belnet.
The question was raised how the program behaves with wildcards. This will
be tested once the software has been installed.
Also, the Belgian map will be abandoned if the software runs properly. Sites
will be divided into categories (academic sites, internet providers, computer
manufacturers, ...).
Peter Van Rossem will send the reports of the previous meetings to Geert
Peeraer who is managing the WG-IS home-page.
A Veronica dataset is available at the K.U.Leuven (gopher). Experiences are
that the usage is limited, and mostly to search for WWW documents.
Lycos has been sold
Nils will examine the existing subject lists he knows of, and make a summary.
Members of the workgroup are asked to send the subject lists they know of to Nils.
Up till now, the chairman of the workgroup would represent the workgroup
in the user committee. As previously pointed out, the discussions in the
UC not being to the point, the chairman has been released of this duty.
Any member of the workgroup can volunteer to attend a meeting of the UC.
The one-year period has elapsed. Nils Meulemans has accepted a new
2-year period of chairman, Peter Van Rossem will remain vice-chairman.
The next meeting of the workgroup will be held on August 29th, 1995 at
Belnet. Start of time will be 9:30.
A suggestion has been made to have a meeting with the other workgroups.
Nils will contact them and see if they are interested.
Updated: August 2nd, 1995