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In order to understand the present and potential role
of the Internet as a large distributed database or as
a conduit to other databases, it is important to be
mindful of its recent explosive growth.
It is estimated that the Internet currently encompasses
over 7,000,000 hosts, serving more than 40,000 ,000
end-users, and offering access to some 11,000,000 World
Wide Web documents. A chart showing the growth of the
number of Internet Hosts (adapted from Hobbes' Internet
Timeline) clearly illustrates exponential nature of
the Internet's growth:
The volume and variety of this rapidly expanding Internet
activity can be divided into three basic categories:
The first of these is Email and various ways of distributing
and providing access to email documents --namely, through
Listservs and Newsgroups. The second is Telnet, a means
of logging on to a remote server on the Internet.
This establishes a conventional client-database connection
using the Internet as a conduit, as described above.
The third is the WWW, which interconnects and provides
access to documents, files, programs and graphics to
form a virtual database as explained above. These different
forms of archived electronic information are all accessible
on the WWW via hyperlinks.
These hypertext or hypermedia links can provide a connection
from one file to any other file on the WWW. Because
these links provide an access structure for the WWW
that is lateral, non-hierarchical, and intricately interwoven,
it is called the "Web
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