Subject: ROADS 2.00 - a free Yahoo-like system written in Perl
From: Martin Hamilton <[email-masked]>
Date: 24 Sep 1998 14:30:36 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl.announce,comp.lang.perl.misc

ROADS software version 2.00
                   ---------------------------
                <URL:http://www.roads.lut.ac.uk/>

WHAT IS THIS ?

The ROADS software is a collection of tools which can be used in
building on-line catalogues.  Key features of the package are :-

  . Simple text based resource description format
  . World-Wide Web forms based resource description editor
  . WWW and WHOIS++ based search capability 
  . Automatic generation of customised views of the
      catalogue, e.g. breakdowns by subject category
  . Automatic generation of listings of recently added
      resources
  . Dynamic browsing of resources in particular subject
      categories
  . Highly customizable HTML output
  . Distributed indexing and searching across multiple
      WHOIS++ servers using the Common Indexing Protocol
      (centroids)
  . Limited support for indexing and searching Harvest
      and Z39.50 servers
  . Tested for Year 2000 compliance according to the
      British Standards Institute's check list

It also features a number of World-Wide Web based database
administration tools, e.g.

  . Index maintenance
  . Removing/archiving old resource descriptions
  . Overall installation consistency checking
  . Resource description consistency checking
  . Review date checking
  . Checking for broken links (dangling URLs)
  . Checking for duplicate URLs
  . Checking for URL currency, e.g. records which
      have (or have not) been changed recently

Most of these tools can be used independently of each other.  You
could choose, for example, not to support searching via WHOIS++ - or
not to generate subject category breakdowns of your resource
descriptions.  However, all of the tools are written to manipulate
their data in the IAFA template format, a popular way of writing
simple Internet resource descriptions.