And, third, images are used to populate a public electronic library to provide a formal educational resource for Plant Pathology students and scientists in the academic community. It is also used to create and route automatic e-mail messages to faculty diagnostic specialists based on combinations of the information submitted. When the user chooses to submit information on the Web form, the implementation file compares these variables against a database of e-mail addresses. An e-mail message is subsequently generated and sent to the correct faculty diagnostic specialist with the data base record number of the sample. After successfully submitting the sample, the agent can instantly access it via a search form on the World Wide Web.
Database integration is the heart of the system.
For development purposes, Microsoft Access was used as the database engine. Ultimately, the database platform is Microsoft SQL Server 7. All data submitted via the Web page are stored in a file associated with this database. The key field in the database is an automatically-incrementing counter. The counter number of the sample is the same number that the diagnostic specialist is sent, thus preventing the use of excess fields in the database.