Web architectures for database access

Starting from may 1998 the "Istituto per lo Sviluppo della Formazione Professionale dei Lavoratori" (ISFOL), at the request of the Italian Ministry of the Environment, begins to render accessible via Web the results of a nation-wide census on the teaching and training activities pertaining to environmental themes carried out at Italian universities, secondary schools and professional training centres. The paper documents in brief the technical solutions adopted in implementing that part of the Web accessible information system relative to querying the database via the WWW. The system has been realised using currently available Java technologies such as applets and servlets interfaced to the database system through the JDBC. The paper also introduce the evolution of the system.