How to build an E-city

Abstract

We have created the framework for building Web-based information systems which consists of a tool for automatic object persistence in relational mapping and of a custom XSLT (extensible stylesheet language transformations) processor that would use regular objects instead of XML documents. The benefits of using a framework are: independent design and content management, cross referencing of objects, structure inheritance, multilingual support, independence from the database management system, integration of different Web services and automatic support for multimedia information. The main benefit is shorter time for development of distributed services. Current implementation of the framework is based on RDB (relational database). The framework has been used to develop a city information system for the town of Maribor. The information is collected from organisations, companies, users of the information system, and other Internet and database servers. The information is currently used for presentation on the Internet, on infoterminals, on cable TV, and on teletext. The information system is accessible on http://www.sraka.com (WWW interface) and wap.sraka.com (WAP interface).