ModesXML
ModesXML is the latest version of MODES. It is multi-user, with built-in security in the form of access controls.
ModesXML is firmly based on current W3C standards.
- All data is stored as XML: XML is the most widely-used standard for interchange of database and textual information.
- The report language is XSLT: another standard from the W3C, which is widely used for transforming XML documents. XSLT allows you to produce reports as HTML, XML and text files.
- In addition, there is XSL Formatting Objects support, which lets you generate PDF reports.
- The built-in indexing facility and data grid use XPath expressions.
The underlying database engine supports transactions (commit and rollback), and allows backups to be taken while the database is in active use through "snapshot" transactions.
A CGI program is included which allows you to deliver ModesXML data to your web site. This allows you, for example, to provide an online collections search facility based on live collections data. Complete web sites can be built using ModesXML: this site is an example.
ModesXML comes with support for a number of applications:
- Museum object cataloguing (SPECTRUM-compliant)
- Archive cataloguing (support for the complete EAD framework)
- Termlist application for controlled vocabularies and simple thesauri
- Help application using the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) Lite framework
In addition, you can set up ModesXML to work with any type of XML data that has an associated DTD (Document Type Definition). Projects have used ModesXML for:
- TEI applications (poetry transcriptions; historical data)
- Topic Maps applications
- Web site statistics
- Public comment / feedback forms
The ModesXML Client will run on Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 (64-bit or 32-bit versions) with at least 512MB of RAM. The ModesXML Server requires a Windows server operating system, such as Windows 2003 or Windows 2008, with a minimum 1GB of RAM. Performance will be enhanced by using a dedicated server and a fast network (for example 100Mbit).
ModesXML can be installed on a standalone computer running Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 (64-bit or 32-bit versions) with at least 512MB of RAM.