490i Reading List

Introduction

NERDSA brief history of the internet. A great book for history buffs.

A good Networking textbook. (Used in CSE 461).

An explaination of the Domain Name System.

A good introduction to HTTP that explains what really happens when you click on a link. And here's a more comprehensive tutorial.

Web-Site Management

XML

A Technical Introduction to XML. Very good description of the XML specification. Describes tags, attributes, nesting, and DTDs. Mentions XSL only in passing.

The XML Bible (updated chapters)

A very brief overview with lots of pointers to related info.

XML gets down to business (NetWorker: The Craft of Network Computing, Sept 1999). Summary: high-level overview of XML and how it encodes semantics (as compared with HTML). Describes DTDs and how they constrain and define the tags and attributes usable within an XML document. Briefly covers the debate over XSL (as it competes with CSS and DOM). Mentions a few commerce-related applications of XML, such as micropayments and ads.

Data on the Web: From Relations to Semistructured Data and XML, by Serge Abiteboul, Peter Buneman, Dan Suciu, and Jim Gray.

XML Specification (W3C Recommendation)

XPointer Specification (W3C Working Draft) explains how to link between and into XML documents.

XML with XSL

XSL Specification (W3C Working Draft) Explains how to use extensible stylesheets to specify 1) transformations between documents and 2) an XML vocabulary for specifying the formatting of XML documents.

Practical XML with Linux (CNN)

Nic Miloslav's Introduction to XML: a slew of XML/XSL examples walking you through the features of stylesheet transformations. It seems to cover more topics than the XML Bible, while being more accessible than the XSL specification.

Javascript

Javascript Tutorial for Programmers

Servlets

A tutorial on how to write servlets.

Other Web Publishing Info

Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference, by Danny Goodman. Pro: A good overview, nice discussion of cross-platform compatability, and intro to Javascript. Con: costs money. HTML 4.0 specification (not so good) Multipurpose Web publishing using HTML, XML, and CSS (CACM, 10/99, pp. 95-101). Summary: brief (superficial) overview of CSS, XML, and HTML as they relate to the ability to provide device-independent web-friendly content. Advocates the use of CSS and declarative representations over procedural flashy content such as JavaScript.

Scalable Services with NOW

Cluster-Based Scalable Network Services, by Armando Fox, Steven D. Gribble, Yatin Chawathe, Eric A. Brewer, and Paul Gauthier.

Manageability, Availability and Performance in Porcupine: A Highly Scalable Internet Mail Service, by Yasushi Saito, Brian N. Bershad, and Henry M. Levy.

A Case for NOW, by Thomas E. Anderson, David E. Culler, David A. Patterson, and the NOW team.

Java servlets

Java servlets API (link resource; the official Sun site for info on servlets)

White paper on java servlets (description of and introduction to servlet technology; not terribly readable)

Relational Database

An interesting SQl tutorial with online interpreter and sample database. (I've not read the whole thing so let me know if it is good).

Search Engines

There are many good commercial and free search engines. Some of them are listed on the Web Site Search Tools page. Open source search engines that are often used with Apache include ht://Dig and SWISH-E.

What order should a crawler use when following links?

Information Integration

Personalization

Security

Electronic Commerce

Other Topics

Music Formats

a chatty tutorial to MP3 technology (players, rippers, etc.). The issues with free music formats and piracy.

The Ultimate Band Lista comprehensive resource.

Web tracing

Organization-Based Analysis of Web-Object Sharing and Caching (best paper for class use)

On the scale and performance of cooperative Web proxy caching (more interesting, but harder and more specialized)


Tessa Lau | tlau@cs.washington.edu