APWA Infolink Pilot Sets Sights on Becoming Nation Wide Information Hub
The original database used in preliminary development efforts was an off-the-shelf Microsoft Access database. This provided very “quick and dirty” creation and testing of the proposed database design. Design members could work independently of one another, make changes and see the results very quickly. The use of Access as the preliminary database soon outgrew the requirements of the site. User hits and many concurrent sessions began to take a toll on this database. The decision to migrate the application to an Oracle database ensued.
A mirror of the site was created and data was migrated from Access to an Oracle 8.0 database. The current connection to the new database was established with an Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) data driver from InterSolve, now Micro Focus. With the migration complete, the site could now handle the current and fiture load of Internet activity.
Template-Defined Dynamic Web Page
With the primary users of the site being the planning, design and construction community, the design committee focused attention to the capture and presentation of the eventual data to be stored on the site. Information accessed on the site was to be provided by several different types of IPs. These IPs include federal, state, county and city government agencies, as well as utility, railroad and private companies. Special organizations and regional agencies complete the list. Because it was obvious that different types of information would be provided by the various IPs, a special capture and presentation format needed to be used. The format must be similar in structure and general look, but at the same time be flexible enough to provide uniqueness to each 1P.
The solution was to create a dynamically generated web page driven by information input into the database by the IPs themselves. The resulting page for capturing 1P information is called the “APWA InfoLink Data Template” (Figure 1). The template is populated appropriately with information needed to begin organizing and adding their data. Once registered, each 1P is assigned a username and password. This gives them access to an on-line data entry application that presents them with a raw template. The eventual data to be linked on the site is organized by categories. These categories are used to help organize all of the information to be linked on the site. Once the appropriate information has been linked using the on-line data entry application, the information is immediately available to the user community.
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