The goal of the MIDA research project is to develop an international database accessible worldwide on micropile load tests. In a mini-workshop parallel to the sessions at IWM 2006, participants will have the opportunity to get acquainted with the graphical user interface (GUI) of the database. The main objective of the GUI is to provide an easy-to-use interface.

The MIDA will be implemented using well-known server software. The database itself is built on a MySQL (My Structured Query Language) database server. The database is accessed using PHP (Hypertext Pre-processor) server side pre-processing language. PHP script processes the data and inserts it into Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) templates residing on the server. The XHTML documents are then served over the Internet by Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) to the user's web browser (Fig. 1.1). The database can be accessed from all over the world independent of location or operating system. The only requirements are a modern Internet browser and an Internet connection.

Figure 1. Database and World Wide Web

The MIDA research project is linked to the DATU project (Database on Turku underpinning projects) and the two projects are implemented in the same way. They are, in fact, even located on the same web server.