On integrating hypermedia into decision support and other information systems

Abstract

The goal of this research is to provide hypermedia functionality to all information systems that interact with people. Hypermedia is a concept involving access to information, embodying the notions of context-sensitive navigation, annotation and tailored presentation. This paper presents the architecture of a system-level hypermedia engine, designed both to manage full hypermedia functionality for an information system and to bind interface-oriented front-end systems with separate computation-oriented back-end systems. The engine dynamically superimposes a hypermedia representation over a back-end application's knowledge components and processes. The hypermedia engine generates this representation using bridge laws, which capture the internal structure of client systems. Users access the application through its hypermedia representation. The paper also describes a set of minimal requirements for integrating the hypermedia engine with an information system. These guidelines apply to all integration efforts, not just that described here. Information systems will require some supplementary routines for the engine to manage hypermedia functionality for them. The more sophisticated and cooperative the information system, the higher the level of hypermedia support the engine will provide.Keywords: Bridge laws; Decision support systems; Filters; Hypertext; Hypermedia; Hypermedia engine; Information navigation; Information systems architecture; Integration A vision of hypermedia and information systemsWe envision a world in which information increasingly empowers people. Decision makers, analysts, researchers, trainees, students and casual browsers all will have access to information they need or desire, in a format tailored to their individual tasks and personal preferences.The concept of hypermedia embraces the spirit of such access to information and eventually, we believe, will be incorporated in the interfaces of all decision support systems (DSS), and indeed, all information systems that interact with people. (Various authors, e.g., [43], support this prediction.) Our research goals are to facilitate this integration and to produce tangible results. Once an information system includes hypermedia functionality, the specific applications it supports (e.g., worksheets within a spreadsheet package, models within a linear programming package and expert systems within an expert system shell) automatically become hypermedia applications. Users communicate in hypermedia's direct, context-sensitive fashion and hypermedia functions supplement the system's original commands. (1995) [251][252][253][254][255][256][257][258][259][260][261][262][263][264][265][266][267] The goal of this paper is to encourage an ongoing discussion about providing the users of all information systems with dynamic hypermedia functionality. We began this discussion in [7,8] by proposing a solution -a hypermedia engine that builders can integrate with their systems. From this we derived a starting set of minimal requirements for hypermedia integra...

Fourth generation hypermedia: some missing links for the World Wide Web

“…As long as the hypermedia engine has some intermediate access or mapping function (Bieber, 1995), we should be able to annotate and access metainformation about objects anywhere, including those in heterogeneous data, process and knowledge repositories (Noll & Scacchi, 1996). Automatic link propagation concerns link update.…”

Designing hypertext support for computational applications

“…Anchors, for example, may overlap (e.g., a data value within an equation where both are anchors, or smaller geographic features embedded within larger ones). Several other compliance issues are discussed in [4] and [7]. Furthermore, the interface module must display new types of information that originate from the hypertext module, including link metainformation, annotations, ovei-views, and guided tours that restrict user interaction (as well as the hypertext module's own menus, u.ser dialogs, and warning messages).…”

A case study in systematic hypermedia design

“…We direct the reader to our prior research in systematic hypermedia user interface design [27] and in automatically generating hypermedia based on an application's internal structure [28,29]. These do not have the breadth of RMM.…”