A description of MultiWeb

 Hardware components

 Software components, developers and testers

 Update

 Limitations

 History and Roadmap

Hardware components

MultiWeb was hosted by a MicroVax 4100 OpenVMS 5.5 machine with Multinet 3.5 TCP/IP network services.

Since Nov 13, 2001, MultiWeb is running on Compaq Alpha Tru64 Unix.

Software components, developers and testers

MultiWeb is powered by:

• OSU Http web server 1.9A up to Nov 13, 2001; 11 CGI programs written in DCL (about 900 lines) and C (about 1500 lines)
• From Nov 13, 2001: Apache web server, and Perl instead of DCL; C routines were ported without modifications.

  URBE nodes are running Aleph 3.3.0, on Alpha or MicroVax DEC machines (Unix or OpenVMS). No additional software is required in each URBE node.

  MultiWeb was written by Stefano Bargioni (Pontifical University of the Holy Cross) and Juan Diego Ramírez (Pontifical University of the Holy Cross).
  The beta version was tested by Paolo Bizzarri (Pontifical Biblical Institute), Claudio Petrini (Politecnico of Turin), Robert A. Gahl (Pontifical University of the Holy Cross), Meikel Pöss (Stanford University).

Update

• Data displayed by the MultiWeb system are retrieved online from URBE archives. Thus, MultiWeb constantly offers up-to-date authority files and records. Changes on URBE archives are immediately available for online query.
• Note that when new records are exported into the UCC archive, they cannot be updated in case of changes. This is the reason why you can experiment differences in title or author fields when comparing a record stored in the UCC archive with its original one stored in the URBE archive where it was written first.
• This is another major difference between UCC and the MultiWeb: the MultiWeb can act as a online Union Common Catalog for groups of Aleph archives.

Limitations

• MultiWeb is unable to display non-latin alphabets
• Find cannot be applied to more than one base at a time

History and Roadmap

History

March 2, 1998 - Version 1.0 beta

• browse search, with not merged or merged results
• direct search through record number
• display formats: full, short, short with location, ISBD
• hypertext links to other records (LKR field)

March 7, 1998 - Version 1.0

• compressed results of a browse search

June 3, 1998 - Version 2.0

• find

March 20, 1999 - Version 2.2

• HTTP headers and HTTP meta tags
• holdings (copies of monographs and issues of serials)

November 13, 2001 - Version 3.0

• MultiWeb is now running on Compaq Alpha Tru64 Unix

June 10, 2002 - Version 3.1

• Expert Mode in Find Searches for Library ASC

February 2, 2003 - Version 4.0

• interface to UCC revisited. UCC now gathers more than 1.3 million records
• pagination of Find results

Roadmap

• No roadmap is planned...