BirchBob is based on
the need to be able to search all technology transfer offices
at one time. It achieves this by using a web spider
to gather the technology descriptions from each office
of technology transfer and then providing a search engine interface for searching by institution, field of use, country, etc. This searchability is enhanced by the use of XML tags on the web pages of each organization.
BirchBob XML Open Schema
In 2003,
BirchBob, along with government and academic technology transfer
professionals, developed an XML tagging schema that joins all the
technology transfer offices from academia, government, and industry to
create the first One-stop search engine for technologies available for
licensing. The creation of the BirchBob Open XML Schema included input
from NIH, NTTC, NASA, FLC, DOE, University of California, University of
Rochester, Harvard University, and many personal contributions from people
attending the Special Interest Group at AUTM' s Annual meeting in Orlando,
and through the BirchBob web site. The schema represents XML tags that are
placed on web pages describing an organization's technologies.
BirchBob Open XML Schema
| AssetType |
Category of aggregated information Asset Types
 Licensable Technology
 R&D Collaboration
 Facility
 Expertise |
| AssetTitle |
Title of the technology |
| Organization |
Name of institution |
| Summary |
Brief Description of the technology |
| FieldofUse |
The purpose and/or type of technology |
| BBURL |
Web address of full description of technology |
| Language |
Language of the listing |
More information
about XML
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SELF TAGGING - information intended to Webmasters
BirchBob will apply
XML tags on the content it searches and subsequently make these XML files
available to you for placing them back on your web site. However, you may
want to pre-empt this step and apply XML tags yourself directly to your
pages. This process is very easy and only takes minutes. BirchBob does not
require submission of listings, just the identification of where the
technology description content resides on the organization web site. The sample XML page below shows how the XML-tagged content
can be placed inside a comment and then placed in the header of your
static or flat file web pages. Although the content is duplicated in the
body of the page, this is necessary to hide the XML code for old browsers
that can not handle XML tags. If you are dumping your data out of a
database, then BirchBob recommends that you create a script to automate
the creation of a single file for each technology, where the file is pure
XML and the BBURL points to the public web page listing. Place all of
these XML files in a web site for which you provide the URL to BirchBob.
<?xml version="1.0"
encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
<TAsset xmlns="http://www.birchbob.com"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.birchbob.com
TAsset.xsd">
<AssetType>LICENSABLE_TECHNOLOGY</AssetType>
<AssetTitle>Diterpene Production in Recombinant Yeast</AssetTitle>
<Organization>
Rice
University
</Organization>
<Summary>
Through genetic modification of Saccharomyces
cerevisiae and defined culture conditions, the production of
diterpenes through fermentation has been achieved. This provides an
opportunity to synthesize rare or novel diterpenes in a
cost-effective manner.
</Summary>
<FieldOfUse>Biotechnology, Bioengineering</FieldOfUse>
<BBURL>http://ott.rice.edu/PortfolioDetails.cfm?PortfolioID=32&PortfolioCatID=11</BBURL>
<Language>EN-US</Language>
</TAsset> |
Step Wise Implementation Notes :
1. Most web sites are either static
flat files (each web page is an HTML document) or dynamic (each web page
is generated on the fly from the content stored in a database). Please
determine which type of web page you use for listing technologies. A file
ending in .htm or .html is usually a flat file, whereas a file ending in
.cfm or .asp is often a database generated file (but not always, so please
check).
2. Flat files: It is important to
place the XML tagged content inside an HTML comment so that older browsers
do not try to display the XML tags themselves. The content then actually
appears twice, once in the comment in the head and once in the body of the
document Databasers: It is easiest to code a program that will dump the
XML tagged content of all your listings to one file which can be crawled
by the BirchBob spider. As long as each technology is properly tagged,
BirchBob can crawl the file and separate each technology into its own
listing. This single page will never be viewed by web users, so it does
not HTML to format the content looks.
3. Flat files: the commented
content will not display when the web page is viewed using a regular
browser, so remember that the HTML-tagged content must be duplicated
outside of the content inside the comments brackets. Databasers: the BBURL
is the field that tells the search results page links where to connect on
your public web site. Be sure this URL is correct, especially if it is
generated from a database.
4. Flat files: these need to go on
your public web site Databasers: Place the document containing all the
listings in a public directory that is setup to allow our spider to crawl
it daily. Both: Please consider automating uploading so that any changes
in data or web content is submitted on a regular
basis.
5. BirchBob needs to know the
location of your listing page or pages. Please send this information to
BirchBob by Email.
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FAQs… on XML
Why do I need to use the BirchBob Search System?
The idea behind the BirchBob project is to create a web searching system capable of finding content of technologies available for licensing that has been XML tagged in a standard form throughout the Transfer of Technology industry.
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What is XML?
• XML stands for E X tensible M arkup L anguage
• XML is a markup language much like HTML
• XML was designed to describe data
• XML tags are not predefined in XML. You must define your own tags
• XML uses a Document Type Definition (DTD) or an XML Schema to describe the data
• XML with a DTD or XML Schema is designed to be self-descriptive
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What area the main differences between XML and HTML ?
• XML was designed to carry data.
• XML is not a replacement for HTML.
• XML and HTML were designed with different goals:
• XML was designed to describe data and to focus on what data is
• HTML was designed to display data and to focus on how data looks.
• HTML is about displaying information, while XML is about describing information.
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Is XML the future of Web development?
XML is going to be everywhere. The designers of BirchBob have been participating in XML development since its creation. It has been amazing to see how quickly the XML standard has been developed and how quickly a large number of software vendors have adopted the standard. We strongly believe that XML will be as important to the future of the Web as HTML has been to the foundation of the Web and that XML will be the most common tool for all data manipulation and data transmission.
What is the purpose of an XML Schema? What is an XML Schema?
The purpose of an XML Schema is to define the building blocks of an XML document by defining the order, number, values, content and data types of elements, child elements and attributes that can appear in a document.
Think of XML Schema as a map identifying specific fields within your content. Each type of field, such as inventor name, or abstract, can be retrieved by contextual search - that is written text words. So, as the content is mapped to this standard schema, the search engine can identify the fields of interest so that you can find what you're looking for.
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What is the purpose of an XML Schema? What is an XML Schema?
The purpose of an XML Schema is to define the building blocks of an XML
document by defining the order, number, values, content and data types of
elements, child elements and attributes that can appear in a document.
Think of XML Schema as a map identifying specific fields within your
content. Each type of field, such as inventor name, or abstract, can be
retrieved by contextual search - that is written text words. So, as the
content is mapped to this standard schema, the search engine can identify
the fields of interest so that you can find what you're looking for.
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