Review of CARDIOnet Program Information system
Review prepared by Arian Stipić, Microsoft Regional Director Croatia, Zagreb, February 2000
CARDIOnet Program, international project of the education in cardiovascular medicine on Internet for the physicians has started in 1995, at very beginning of Internet. In January 1996, first educational content of CARDIOnet Program was installed as static WEB site on the server of CARnet, Croatian Academic Research Network, in Zagreb.
However, Head of the Program - Assoc. Prof. Dženana Rezaković MD and International Editorial Board had complex vision about future functions and the structure of CARDIOnet Journal and Exhibition, main parts of the Program, that initiated planning of dynamic, interactive WEB site with its own hardware and software structure. Editorial concept required the following:
- Protection of the confidentiality of medical data according to the USA government medical agency, FDA (Food Drug Administration) regulations and the security system.
- Registration and control of the users access.
- Administration of immense number of the documents, multirelational databases.
- Search engines based on single or multiple criteria.
- High interactivity, user-friendly and logic navigability.
The project started by two parallel sub-projects. The first sub-project, to design and set up hardware architecture, Intranet and Internet networks for computer Internet centre, based on Hewlett Packard technology, in CARDIOnet own business building in Zagreb. The centre was opened at the beginning of 1997, offering complete technical structure and facilities for independent on-line work.
CARDIOnet centre: hardware-software and technical office facilities:
- Hewlett Packard computers and servers; combined Unix and Microsoft NT platform; two Unix Servers; two Microsoft NT Servers 4.0; Internet Information Server 3.0; Index Server 1.1; SQL Server 7.0; integrated by Activex objects (Active Server Pages) and standard programs written in Visual Basic 6.0 EE.
- Search through data bases, structured by Microsoft SQL Server 7.0.
- Search through documents by Microsoft Index Server.
- Several black and color HP printers, scanners, CD-writer.
- Internal LAN (Local Area Network) 100 MB/s.
- 44 interconnected computer working places, internal Intranet system
- McIntosh Desk Top Publishing Work Station.
- Leased own Internet line, 128 Kb/s with upgrading to 2Mb/sc.
- 15 telephone lines, multiporte modem with 5 lines.
- Own new Editorial Office – 300 m2 building.
The second sub-project was the development of own software for CARDIOnet Program, based on Microsoft technology. At 1996, it was very ambitious project, in the view that only few WEB sites on Internet world-wide were designed as interactive, dynamic sites with such complex performances.
CARDIOnet WEB site has been developed and installed in the dawn of the Internet rapid expansion during the 1997, using the best of both worlds (in the terms of then available technologies), which means the combination of the UNIX server and the Windows NT Server. The initial choice have proven to be exceptionally stable during all these years, and the WEB site itself have very seldom been out of operation, usually for the purposes of routine maintenance. It means that the site achieved a very good availability (over 98% over this period) and it never experienced any kind of problem regarding the scalability issues (the main concern in every Internet site).
The UNIX system is being used as the DNS Server and E-Mail Server, as well as the WEB Server for sub-sites containing only the static documents. But, the best part of the system indubitably belongs to the Windows NT Server 4.0 running the Microsoft Internet Information Server (this is actually a WEB Server under NT) and Microsoft SQL Server (the leading relational database Server).
The problem that needed to be solved has been very serious in those days, and it is still today. On the one hand, CARDIOnet had to be able to serve any kind of WEB browser (Netscape, Internet Explorer, etc.), without loosing a bit of the required functionality. On the other hand, there were several additional requirements like:
- Automatic administration of all the contents of the site.
- Automatic security checking with page-level permissions for every visitor accessing the site from the Internet.
- Automatic monitoring of all activities (accessed pages) for all documents on the site.
- Dynamic content-creation of many documents.
- Ability to search through all the documents.
- Integration with the SQL Server database holding the structured data about visitors, companies, documents, security permissions etc.
After a serious evaluation of all existing technologies, CARDIOnet decided to deploy a set of Microsoft products and technologies. The core technology is the so-called ASP dynamic Server pages, with the ability to integrate with any DCOM based distributed object on the network, and create virtually any kind of dynamic content ‘on-the-fly’. This means that the ASP technology can actually create literally millions of different pages as the response to the user’s request.
The main advantage of this approach became quite obvious from the very first day; instead of error-prone and overwhelming editing of many thousands of static WEB pages, the inclusion of the ASP technology resulted with no more than 50 dynamic pages that require no administration whatsoever. All the dynamic data have been stored in the SQL Server database, and the final content of the page is being constructed within a second.
The other significant technology being used is Microsoft Index Server, which allows for the content-indexing and fast searching through massive document stores (up to hundreds of millions of pages). This technology enables CARDIOnet serving any kind of complex search through all the documents that exist on the site. This search can be based on keywords or even entire phrases and is executed extremely fast. The net result is that the end user does not experience any delay in the response time.
Security has been an issue from the very beginning of the project. The major request has been the ability to assign the arbitrary custom level of access permissions for every single visitor and every single page on the site. In order to meet this request, a special security sub-system has been developed and integrated with the SQL Server database. All user data, all document data and all user permissions have been stored in the database, where they can quickly and easily be checked. Those data are then compared in the runtime to a tiny piece of executable code that resides on every protected page. At this way, the system guarantees that only the authorised users (visitors) are allowed to access the protected pages. This control happens on every single page, and on each hit (access).
Finally, as a kind of the ‘side-effect’ of this security sub-system, CARDIOnet is able to report exactly every single access to the WEB Server itself, like:
- Who tried to access the document?
- What document have been requested?
- When did this happen (with the precision resolution in seconds)?
- What was the IP address of the visitor?
- What was the sequence of the visitor’s requests?
- How long has the visitor been on any particular page etc.?
Thus, the system enables not only the control but also objective evaluation of the visits and users interest for various contents on CARDIOnet Program.
After almost three years on Internet, CARDIOnet Program with its 27.670 registered users from 66 countries proved to be stable, sound and user-friendly site, offering complex services. As an interactive, dynamic WEB site, CARDIOnet Program represents the example of the top information technology and functions that could be achieved on Internet, for the time being.
