Pervasive Hypermedia

Author:

Kenneth M. Anderson

Email:

kena-at-cs.colorado.edu

Advisor:

Richard N. Taylor

Award Date:

June 1997

Institution:

University of California, Irvine

Institution Location:

Irvine, California, USA

Web Location:

http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~kena/dissertation.pdf

Abstract:

The heterogeneity of modern computing environments contributes to the information overload experienced by users. Relationships within and between applications, documents, and processes are often implicit and must be managed and tracked by the user. Hypermedia has been put forth as one approach to organizing these relationships, making them explicit so they can be managed. One approach to providing environment-wide hypermedia services is through the use of open hypermedia systems (OHSs). OHSs are open with respect to the set of systems and information over which hypermedia services can be provided. This research area contrasts with the original approach to hypermedia services that involved developing monolithic systems with a closed set of supported data types (e.g. HyperCard). Given the existence of OHSs, another area of research is developing integration techniques such that applications that existed before the introduction of an OHS can take advantage of the OHS’s hypermedia services. This dissertation provides contributions in both of these research fields.

In particular, this work demonstrates techniques which enable OHSs to address the heterogeneity of their computing environments, to leverage the strengths of the World Wide Web (while providing the Web with improved hypermedia services), and to integrate large classes of applications at once. Heterogeneity is handled via a set of flexible abstract hypermedia concepts, application program interfaces in multiple programming languages, support for multiple operating systems, and a low entry barrier to use provided by an architecture designed to reduce the responsibilities of client applications. Integration with the Web is enabled via a scalable architecture for OHSs that is compatible with the Web’s architecture and takes advantage of the strengths of Web protocols and the familiarity of Web interaction styles. The integration of multiple applications occurs via a technique for making user-interface toolkits (and hence their constructed applications) clients of an OHS. This technique provides consistent inter- and intra-application hypermedia services.

The dissertation is validated by examining the characteristics of the clients integrated with the exploratory systems developed during the course of this research. The dissertation concludes by positioning this work within the context of large-scale information environments.