Hi all ---
 
        The question of how to make a database Internet ready is
a good one, and one that I can (sort of) answer.  The standard way
to do an Internet database is to take the database and dump it into
ASCII format.  Each line of ASCII text is a row in the database and
each field is delimited with some standard character.
        Once in ASCII format, you need to reformat the ASCII into
"paragraph" format.  Then, the whole file is full text indexed, with
each "paragraph" as the returnable item.  The full text indexer is
usually a free program called WAIS.  WAIS can be easily incorporated in the
functionality of gopher, which is now a standard Internet retrieval
tool.
        Once linked to gopher, any gopher user can perform searches
on the database and have the search results returned.  The main drawback to
this method is two-fold.  One, you need to have a "real" database and
an ASCII version lying around... it doubles space.  Two, you cannot
perform some sophisticated searches like "depth>300" because the
indexer does not recognize numerics.  I think later versions of the
indexer might fix this problem.
        The other method for linking a database would be to run a
World Wide Web server and link your database to the server using
forms functionality.  This is still somewhat in a prototype stage and
requires the database be SQL compliant.  Otherwise, it works fine.
        To see an example of a database set up via gopher, check out the
UCMP gopher (gopher ucmp1.berkeley.edu).  Look under
Museum Type Specimen Catalogs and Indices.
 
Cheers,
 
Robert Guralnick
Museum of Paleontology
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720
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(510) 642-9696