Prototype for Extended XDB Using Wiki

This paper describes a prototype of extended XDB. XDB is an open-source and extensible database architecture developed by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to provide integration of heterogeneous and distributed information resources for scientific and engineering applications. XDB enables an unlimited number of desktops and distributed information sources to be linked seamlessly and efficiently into an information grid using Data Access and Retrieval Composition (DARC) protocol which provides a contextual search and retrieval capability useful for lightweight web applications. This paper shows the usage of XDB on common data management in the enterprise without burdening users and application developers with unnecessary complexity and formal schemas. Supported by NASA Ames Research Center through NASA Exploration System Mission Directorate (ESMD) Higher Education grant, a project team at Fairfield University extended this concept and developed an extended XDB protocol and a prototype providing text-searches for Wiki. The technical specification of the protocol was posted to Source Forge (sourceforge.net) and a prototype providing text-searches for Wiki was developed. The prototype was created for 16 tags of the MediaWiki dialect. As part of future works, the prototype will be further extended to the complete Wiki markups and other dialects of Wiki.

💡 Research Summary

The paper presents a prototype that extends NASA’s open‑source XDB (Extensible Database) architecture to support text‑search capabilities for Wiki systems, specifically the MediaWiki dialect. XDB was originally created to integrate heterogeneous and distributed scientific and engineering data sources without imposing rigid schemas. Its core component, the Data Access and Retrieval Composition (DARC) protocol, enables contextual, schema‑free queries over any data source via a lightweight HTTP‑based interface.

Building on this foundation, the authors—supported by a NASA ESMD Higher Education grant and a collaborative team at Fairfield University—designed an “extended XDB” that adapts DARC for Wiki content. The prototype focuses on 16 representative MediaWiki tags (e.g., {{Infobox}}, ==Section==,