R M Jakobovits | PubMed Health

PubMed1997

Managing medical research data with a Web-Interfacing Repository Manager.

This paper describes the Web-Interfacing Repository Manager (WIRM), a perl toolkit for managing and deploying multimedia data, which is built entirely from free, platform-independent components. The WIRM consists of an object-relational API layered over a relational database, with built-in support for file management and CGI programming. The basic underlying data structure for all WIRM data is the repository object, a perl associative array whose values are bound to a row of a table in the relational database. Based on our experience implementing a target application (the Brain Mapper Console), we describe five stages through which a system passes as it evolves from a primitive file hierarchy to a full-fledged repository console.

Brain Mapping↗

PubMed1996

A Web-based repository manager for brain mapping data.

The Web provides a rapid prototyping environment for building platform-independent graphical user interfaces. A Web-based console can be implemented as a suite of CGI scripts that generate HTML code, manipulate files, execute system commands, and invoke external tools. Often these tools share data by reading and writing flat files, which must be explicitly maintained by the CGI programmer. In a repository system, meta-data about each file object are maintained in a database, and access to all data is regulated by a layer of control services. This paper describes the design and implementation of a Web-based Repository Manager (WRM), which provides an application programmer's interface for controlling applications, generating HTML documents, handling Web forms, and managing multi-media data. The WRM is being used to develop a console for the Brain Mapping Framework, a system for visualizing cortical stimulation data obtained during neurosurgery.

Brain Mapping↗