DBPrism plugged into the Apache Cocoon framework is a new way for making Internet applications with technologies as XML and XSLT. Cocoon is a presentation framework based on servlet technology, so it can run in any web server supporting servlet technology. As a presentation framework it has the responsibility for serving pages requested by the user, applying first styles as the page needs and transforming static or dynamic XML content into HTML. Cocoon is also able to perform more sophisticated formatting, such as XSL:FO rendering on PDF, WML formatting for WAP-enabled devices, or direct XML serving to XML and XSL aware clients. The Cocoon project aims to change the way web information is created, rendered, and served by completely separating document content, style, and logic.
DBPrism is plugged into the Cocoon framework for the XML creation step. It then moves the logic to the database, closely allied to the data itself. The most important characteristic of DBPrism is that unlike in other technologies, the logic of the application resides in the database as a stored procedure. The stored procedure could be written in the proprietary language or in Java. Writing stored procedure in Java with a JDBC or SQLJ call guarantees portability across different database vendors because there is a standard defined for this purpose.