Automatically Generating World-Wide Web Interfaces to Relational Databases

Reformatting information currently held in databases into HyperText Markup Language (HTML) pages suitable for the World-Wide Web (WWW) requires significant effort both in creating the pages initially and their subsequent maintenance. We avoid these costs by directly coupling a WWW server to the source data within a database using additional software we have developed. This software layer automatically generates the WWW interface to the database using meta-data from the catalogue. The resulting interface allows either direct entry of SQL queries or an intuitive graphical means of specifying queries. Query results are returned as dynamic HTML pages. Browsing of the database is made possible by creating dynamic HyperText links that are included automatically within the query results. These links are derived from referential integrity constraints defined in the meta-data.