CSC Honours report, November 1995
First Examiner : Dr. Lloyd Allison
Department Of Computer Science, Monash University,
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Second Examiner : Dr. Ann Nicholson
Department Of Computer Science, Monash University,
[home page]
Some of the problems with these services include updating databases and accessing these database
services. This is because they are too centralised. A solution to these problems is to have a database
system on the WWW that is distributed and local thus solving the accessing and updating problems.
Rumour could alleviate the problems faced by these database services. Rumour is a distributed database
system that is also local to the WWW server it is installed on. It contains a local search program
that searches through its local index and a set of small Referring Lists that contains indexes of other
servers.
The search program locally searches through the index and gives users "suggestions"
on other servers to try.
Rumour is close to completion, with all major components tested and running at some Monash University
Web servers, but because Rumour is a distributed database system, the only way to fully assess its effectiveness
is by having Rumour distributed and installed on many Web servers.