{{unreferenced, date=July 2017 A MetaServer is a central

broker A broker is a person or firm who arranges transactions between a buyer and a seller for a commission when the deal is executed. A broker who also acts as a seller or as a buyer becomes a principal party to the deal. Neither role should be confu ...

providing a collated view (similar to a database view) for dispersed

web resource A web resource is any identifiable resource (digital, physical, or abstract) present on or connected to the World Wide Web.< ...

s. It is used to collect data from various web services, web pages,

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...

s, or other online resources/repositories and then present the combined results to the

client Client(s) or The Client may refer to: * Client (business) * Client (computing), hardware or software that accesses a remote service on another computer * Customer or client, a recipient of goods or services in return for monetary or other valuable ...

using a standard web protocol (e.g.

HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, ...

with

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

REST Rest or REST may refer to: Relief from activity * Sleep ** Bed rest * Kneeling * Lying (position) * Sitting * Squatting position Structural support * Structural support ** Rest (cue sports) ** Armrest ** Headrest ** Footrest Arts and entert ...

SOAP Soap is a salt of a fatty acid used in a variety of cleansing and lubricating products. In a domestic setting, soaps are surfactants usually used for washing, bathing, and other types of housekeeping. In industrial settings, soaps are use ...

XML-RPC XML-RPC is a remote procedure call (RPC) protocol which uses XML to encode its calls and HTTP as a transport mechanism.Simon St. Laurent, Joe Johnston, Edd Dumbill. (June 2001) ''Programming Web Services with XML-RPC.'' O'Reilly. First Edition. ...

, etc.).

Styles of use

The purpose of such a system is to provide one or several of the following: * a unified view on multiple resources * easy comparison of the data * standardized access to different repositories * calibration of the data * determining the data consensus

Example MetaServer projects

Typical, widespread implementations of MetaServers are: * Meta-Search-Engines * DNS MetaServers * Protein Structure and Function Prediction Gateways * Computer Game MetaServers * Text Mining MetaServers (e.g. BioCreative Metaserver - BCMS) Enterprise application integration Internet architecture