A HyperText Markup Language Interface for multi-product database libraries

The HyperText Markup Language Interface (HTMLI) provides the Department of Defense (DoD) user community with access to an Image Product Library (IPL) and its associated server. The IPL is a library/archive for several categories of data, while its server acts as a broker to other database libraries. The HTMLI accesses data in the IPL and implements the IPL server application programming interface (API) to provide a gateway between the IPL and the user community supported World Wide Web (WWW) (i.e., the Internet) tools and servers. The end result is that a user can employ a WWW browser (e.g., Mosaic/sup TM/ Netscape/sup TM/ or Microsoft Internet Explorer/sup TM/) to access an IPL server from any platform that can support a hypertext viewer, without the need for any other specialized software specific to that application.