1. A Scalable Application Architecture for composing News Portals on the Internet
Serpil TOK, Zeki BAYRAM.
Eastern MediterraneanUniversity
Famagusta
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus

2. Overview Using WEB services to provide content for news portals
Tool for uploading content to each WEB service independently
Web Application (News Portal) that queries Web Services based upon the user’s preferences and presents customized content
Implemented in Microsoft .NET framework
Not a new idea in itself, rather an application of existing technology to a real-world situation
If developed further, could be the basis of customizable news portals

3. XML Web Services A kind of remote procedure call
Allows the composition of applications from components that are physically in different locations on the Internet
Generally use SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) for communication with clients. Others are HTTP GET and HTTP POST
Extends distributed computing to a broad range of client applications.
With proper tools, very easy to design and use.

4. Components of the project
A News Portal Site, implemented as an Asp.Net Web application
A Windows Application for reporters, used to upload content to a Web service
XML Web Services which expose news content to portals through a well-specified interface
DBMS ( Ms SQL Server 2000) to store news content

5. The Architecture of the Project
Newsportal
WebSite
(.aspx)
XML Web Service (.asmx)
XML Web
Service (.asmx)
Database1
Database 2
Windows Application for
Reporter (.cs)
Reporter provides news
Reporter provides news
Internet User

6. Uploading news to a news Web Service
Using the Windows application, each reporter can
Compose and edit a news item
Upload his news item to his dedicated database
Manipulate the contents of his database, for example, see a listing of articles, remove articles, modify articles
Rudimentary tool, designed as a proof of concept

7. Screen-shot of the Windows application

8. The NewsPortal Web Application
This is the “front end” for end consumers of the news provided by reporters
The idea is that many others with different user interfaces but using the same data sources will be made available to users.
Customized content
In the sample portal,
A user can see the most recent news of reporters covered by the portal,
A user can search for articles in the site
By reporter name,
By category,
By a date,
By a Date Interval,
By a keyword or sentence in subject,
Or , a user can see all reporters’ articles without any restrictions,

9. Screen-shot of the Entry page of the News Portal

10. Main Search Form of the Sample Portal

11. Web Services Provided

12. Description of the Web Service functions
Takenews( ) WebMethod: Returns the most recent articles by the authors.
Takereport( string no, string fname) WebMethod: This function takes two parameters: an article ID (“no”), and an author name (“fname”). It returns the article belonging to the author, and which has the specified ID (used mainly for testing purposes)
Takesearch (string q) WebMethod: This is the most general of the Web methods: it takes a query string (whose format should naturally be known to the calling program) containing complex search criteria, and returns all articles satisfying the criteria. In a production version of the application, this would be left out! (to be replaced by more specific Web methods)

13. Microsoft .NET Framework
An advanced multi-language platform for software development
Huge library consisting of thousands of classes
Visual tools for integrated program development and testing (Visual Studio.NET)
Support for desktop applications (Windows Forms), Web applications (Web forms, ASP.NET), Database access (ADO.NET), XML Web Services

14. Web Forms and ASP.NET
Used for the server-side part of a WEB application
Develop WEB applications as if developing desktop application
UI components placed on a form, and event handlers written for components
Components translated into HTML components automatically
Some functionality delegated to the client side through the automatic generation of scripting code to be executed on the browser (validity checking of input etc.)

15. Web Forms and ASP.NET
The transfer of the page to a remote browser not too important from a programming point of view
Separation of the user interface and the logic of the application (the so-called “code behind” approach)
Compiled .Net-based environment

16. Web Services using the .NET framework
Web service defined by extending a class available in the .Net framework
Using web services involves adding a Web reference to your project, which automatically creates a local “proxy class” for the service. Any interaction with the Web service goes through the methods of the proxy class

17. Future Work
More comprehensive Web services (larger assortment of functions)
Subscription mechanism for Web services (only those portals who subscribe to be allowed to obtain their revices)

18. Conclusion
We presented a prototype application that uses Web services and a multi-layered architecture to supply content for news portals
Our architecture is extendible (just add more Web services) and leads to easy building of customized content for end-users
We briefly described the advantages of using an advanced programming platform for implementing a project such as this