The virtual document concept based on links makes it possible to share documents on the Internet and to produce new knowledge. Currently, virtual documents can link to unstructured data such as texts or multimedia objects and semi-structured data such...
The virtual document concept based on links makes it possible to share documents on the Internet and to produce new knowledge. Currently, virtual documents can link to unstructured data such as texts or multimedia objects and semi-structured data such as HTML or XML documents. Structured data, i.e. databases, are now already provided on Internet. Therefore, it is a natural extension for virtual documents to support links to structured data.
In this paper, we design and implement a subsystem that creates and processes query links in the MIRAGE-III digital library systems. By maintaining database schema information, our system helps the virtual document authors to locate databases and to create query links. A group of the MIRAGE-III digital library systems can share each other the databases that are owned by the MIRAGE-III systems and opened publicly on the Internet.