We have just published three entirely static sites:
and we're about to publish a fourth, Trish Baer's MyNDIR.
All four of these are using recent versions of the Endings staticSearch
tool, which now includes support for wildcard searches as well as
booleans and a variety of different search filters. Check it out at the Despatches site.
This is a significant point in our work. Not only have we developed a set of
rigorous principles for digital longevity; we have also applied them with
complete success to a substantial number of projects. We have solved the
search-dependency problem far more effectively than we expected to be able
to; when we started Endings, we had no idea how to tackle it, and now we
have search pages which are better, faster, more configurable and more
elegant than what the old databases used to afford us. We have been able to
take down two XML database applications, and when MyNDIR is published we'll
be able to remove a third and shut down an entire Tomcat instance.
We're also able to demonstrate that multiple editions can live side-by-side,
just like books on a shelf; MoEML 6.3 is still available, as is Despatches 2.0. There's no
reason why we shouldn't keep them, and every subsequent edition, for ever if
we want to and we can afford the disk space. At any point, the Library can
take any or all of these editions and serve them itself without any server
requirements other than any old web server.