CancerNet redistribution via WWW

Proc AMIA Annu Fall Symp. 1996:403-7.

Abstract

CancerNet from the National Cancer Institute contains nearly 500 ASCII-files, updated monthly, with up-to-date information about cancer and the "Golden Standard" in tumor therapy. Perl scripts are used to convert these files to HTML-documents. A complex algorithm, using regular expression matching and extensive exception handling, detects headlines, listings and other constructs of the original ASCII-text and converts them into their HTML-counterparts. A table of contents is also created during the process. The resulting files are indexed for full-text search via WAIS. Building the complete CancerNet WWW redistribution takes less than two hours with a minimum of manual work. For 26,000 requests of information from our service per month the average costs for the worldwide delivery of one document is about 19 cents.

MeSH terms

  • Computer Communication Networks*
  • Data Collection
  • Humans
  • Hypermedia*
  • Information Services / statistics & numerical data
  • Information Systems* / statistics & numerical data
  • Medical Oncology*
  • Neoplasms / diagnosis
  • Neoplasms / therapy