Methods, systems, and computer program products, for using a web browser
to view stored data over the World Wide Web, where the data is stored in a format
normally incompatible with such viewing. A client computer processes a view descriptor
and a general view class to generate a specific view class, or template, and a
query. The specific view class is used as a template to display data the client
receives from a data server after submitting the generated query to the data server.
The result of using a specific view class as a template for the data is that the
data is output in Hypertext Markup Language, so as to be easily displayable on
a web browser. View classes and view descriptors may be developed using existing
Web development tools such as Extensible Style Language and Extensible Markup Language.