Web database examples 

The term "database" is perhaps misleading in the context of the many different ways database technology can be used on the World Wide Web. While "traditional" databases can certainly be made accessible to users via the Web, database technology also opens up possibilities for developing collaborative research resources, conducting online surveys, and automating site management.

This section looks at a small selection of online databases and database-driven sites, with some behind-the-scenes information in each case. Where we are not involved with the databases ourselves, the developers/maintainers were asked for for additional information. 

• Directory-type resources
• Collaborative research resources
• Database-driven sites
• Online surveys (example still to be added)

Directory-type resources 

Women-in-Research Database 
The National Research Foundation's database of Women-in-Research was developed in MS Access and taken online using Cold Fusion. Women academics and researchers from all disciplines in South Africa are invited to submit their contact details and information about their research interests to the database, which serves as a networking tool. 
http://www.nrf.ac.za/wir/wirdbase.htm

A full explanation of how the NRF's Women-in-Research database was taken online with Cold Fusion is available on this site:
http://www.nrf.ac.za/yenza/database/cfusion.htm

The approach to quality assurance is as follows: contributors should take primary responsibility for the quality of their own information. New entries and updates are thus written live to the database. At the same time, recognizing that problems are still possible, a copy of each entry is e-mailed to the NRF where the decision can be taken to edit or delete it from the database.

American Historical Association
The American Historical Association make substantial use of web databases, both in the members' section (for example, an online membership directory and change of address services) and in the public areas of the AHA's web site (for example a directory of History Departments with over 800 entries, and a directory of Dissertations in Progress with over 4000 entries).
http://www.theaha.org/

The databases were developed in-house. An active decision was taken to use MS Access 97, with the front end graphic users interfaces (GUIs) programmed in Allaire Cold Fusion. According to Vernon Horn, the AHA's Internet projects co-ordinator, they considered both Perl and ASP, but found Cold Fusion "head and shoulders above the others in terms of quickly and (relatively) easily creating data entry forms and search interfaces."

Collaborative research resources

The term "collaborative research resources" is used here to describe online resources such as which are developed and maintained collectively. In most cases, contributors don't require any technical knowledge of web database development. The challenges for developing this type of resource lie not with the technical side, but with factors such as ensuring active participation, quality assurance etc. The difficulties of persuading people (often at a distance) to contribute (often on a voluntary basis) is a recurring theme among people co-ordinating the development and maintenance of resources of this nature.

European Youth Research Bibliography
The European Youth Research Bibliography, which covers forty seven countries, provides "detailed references of recent youth research publications from a number of European countries, including abstracts and availability information".
Information is entered on-line by librarians and researchers in each country. The system runs on Unix, using MySQL web server. The database was developed in Perl by EPM, a Swedish company with a strength in online databases, which also hosts the database. According to Irena Guidikova of the Youth Directorate at the Council of Europe, this particular system was "inherited" rather than resulting from an active choice.
http://eyrb.epm.se/

GPPIS
The Global Plant and Pest Information System is an online compendium of plant protection information developed by the FAO. 
http://pppis.fao.org/

The developers explain the underlying approach as follows:

"GPPIS is inconceivable without the Internet. It is a dynamic, interactive, digital implementation of the traditional approach whereby a group of authors band together to publish a multi-author book. Like journals and books, GPPIS has a Supervisor, who welcomes your comments, editors, referees and critical readers, and GPPIS uses the same peer review processes employed by refereed journals. However, individual pieces of information are not bought or sold. GPPIS data and source code are in the public domain and not copy righted. The collected sum of information belongs to everybody because the task of providing data and keeping the information current and accurate is distributed globally. Every time an individual GPPIS user contributes his time and knowledge, he gains access to the sum of all similar contributions."

Database-driven sites

Using database technology to manage web sites can have two key advantages: it reduces the time and effort involved in maintaining large web sites with frequently-changing information, and it can allow information to be updated by people with no technical knowledge of HTML or web design.

Among the many web sites making substantial use of database technology for site management are:

University of Natal, South Africa
http://www.nu.ac.za/

Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/

Internet Movie Database
http://www.imdb.com/

Independent Online
http://www.iol.co.za

Online surveys

Because of limited access to the Internet nationally online survey questionnaires probably have limited applications for the average South African researcher. There are, however, certain areas in which online surveys can be an appropriate and cost-effective way of conducting research. If, for example, a university wanted to probe perceptions of staff development needs among academics at that institution, an online questionnaire might be a viable option. See the Yenza! section on using the Internet as a research medium for resources and examples.