This paper describes the design principles of the Web-based Information Publishing System (WIPS) that is currently under development at the Florida International University. The goal of the project is to facilitate efficient querying of databases through the Web and rapid application development. We examine several design issues related to performance and functionality. We highlight an important technique called query packing, which is used to improve the performance under heavy loads. The ultimate goal of WIPS is to serve the need of the Regional Application Center (RAC) at the Florida International University (FLU), a collaborative effort of NASA and FIU, in disseminating and enabling search of large volumes of scientific data to a diverse community of earth and environmental researchers through the Internet.
