VisLab Home » R&D Projects » Data Management for the Queensland Historical Atlas Project

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Background

Through history we can trace the processes by which Queenslanders have 'made' Queensland. The natural setting has been occupied, 'settled', modified, engineered, re-made as a cultural landscape. Less tangible are the ways that the Queensland setting has shaped identity, as the landscape has served as a powerful presence in the stories, perceptions, social activities and cultural traditions of Queenslanders. The Queensland Historical Atlast (QHAtlas) [1] aims to explore and map the ‘nature-culture’ dialogue through time in the Queensland setting.

The QHAtlas project has two major deliverables:

1. QHAtlas Print

A large-format, c.300 page book co-published by the Queensland Museum (QM) and a commercial/academic publisher. This would be targeted at students, researchers and general readers as a reference work with a strong interpretive edge, encapsulating scholarly work in environmental history, historical and cultural geography, archaeology, anthropology, and heritage studies.

2. eQHAtlas

A website hosted by QM. The project research will generate an interactive platform with content provided by the major cultural agencies that will be maintained and enhanced by QM as a research, teaching and public information resource into the future.

The Project

This project focuses on the "back-end" data management aspects of the Queensland Historical Atlas. We have built a prototype Web 2.0 Internet application powered by the Storage Resource Broker (SRB), a middle-ware data-grid technology that provides a uniform interface to large heterogeneous data collections ([2] and [3]). This will allow collaborators/authors of the QHAtlas project to manage and maintain the large amounts of data necessary for both the print and electronic atlas. These data include the Queensland Museum's cultural heritage collection that contains over 300,000 objects. Our web interface is designed to be a living research tool, able to be enlarged and expanded in the future.


System Architecture

Figure 1. QHAtlas Data Storage System Architecture

The QHAtlas Data Storage system architecture is shown in Figure 1. To understand its functionality, let us examine the data flow (from 1 to 6) that happens behind the scenes as a user interacts with the QHAtlas webpage:

1. Events from webpage
   When a user interacts with the QHAtlas webpage such as requesting for some data, he or she sends events to the Javascript engine
   
   
2. HTTP requests
   The Javascript engine processes the user-generated data request event and sends it in HTTP requests to the web sever.
   
   
3. SRB data request
   The web server passes the received HTTP request to the PHP process that in turn uses the SRB bindings to communicate with a SRB repository via SRB data requests.
   
   
4. SRB federated data I/O
   In this example data flow, the requested data actually resides on a 'federated' SRB repository. SRB technology redirects the data I/O to come from the external source. This occurs seamlessly without user intervention [4].
   
   
5. Asynchronous XML response
   After the data is retrieved from SRB and cached on the web server, the data is returned using the XMLHttpRequest object. The asynchronous nature improves speed, interactivity, and usability in the web interface as the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user performs an action.
   
   
6. Update dynamic content
   Finally the Javascript engine parses the XML response and updates the dynamic content on the QHAtlas webpage. The entire data flow repeats with the next user action.
   

Screenshots

Figure 2. Adding new text and auto-generated PDF preview	Figure 3. Viewing existing images + maps collection and metadata
Figure 4. Viewing auto-window-size map preview	Figure 5. Adding new audio with album art and metadata entry
Figure 6. Video playback with auto-thumbnail generation	Figure 7. Future Queensland Historical Atlas mock-up webpage

Desired Functionality

CORE (Completed)	EXTENDED (In development)
User Interface: Easy to use SRB Data management: Add/remove data to and from SRB repository Add/view/edit metadata Preview data Implemented categories: text, images, audio, video PHP-SRB bindings: Implements all functionality from Python-SRB bindings	User Interface: Mock-up webpage design User Login SRB Data management: Google Maps geo-mapping integration Data searching and sorting capabilities To be implemented: objects, further sources, web links PHP-SRB bindings Bug fixes + more testing is needed

Downloads

Instructions for building from source

PHP-SRB bindings source code: Linux and OS X source distribution (.tar.gz)      Latest code from SVN repository - coming soon!      PHP-SRB AJAX test page source code: Linux and OS X source distribution (.tar.gz)

References

[1]    Queensland Historical Atlas
        http://www.uq.edu.au/qhatlas

[2]    The SRB Project @ UQ VisLab
        http://www.vislab.uq.edu.au/research/SRB/index.html

[3]    SDSC Storage Resource Broker official site
        http://www.sdsc.edu/srb/index.php/Main_Page

[4]    SRB zones @ UQ VisLab
        http://www.vislab.uq.edu.au/research/SRB/zone.html

Acknowledgments

Created by Eric LIAO <e.liao at uq.edu.au>
Funding through UQVislab and QCIF.

- Last updated December 18, 2007 -