An Open Framework for Integrating Widely Distributed Hypermedia Resources

The success of the WWW has served as an illustration of how hypermedia functionality can enhance access to large amounts of distributed information. However, the WWW and many other distributed hypermedia systems offer very simple forms of hypermedia functionality which are not easily applied to existing applications and data formats, and cannot easily incorporate alternative functions which would aid hypermedia navigation to and from existing documents that have not been developed with hypermedia access in mind. This paper describes the extension to a distributed environment of the open hypermedia functionality of the Microcosm system, which is designed to support the provision of hypermedia access to a wide range of source material and application, and to offer straightforward extension of the system to incorporate new forms of information access

Unifying Distributed Processing and Open Hypertext through a Heterogeneous Communication Model

A successful distributed open hypermedia system can be characterised by a scaleable architecture which is inherently distributed. While the architects of distributed hypermedia systems have addressed the issues of providing and retrieving distributed resources, they have often neglected to design systems with the inherent capability to exploit the distributed processing of this information. The research presented in this paper describes the construction and use of an open hypermedia system concerned equally with both of these facets

A schema-based P2P network to enable publish-subscribe for multimedia content in open hypermedia systems

Open Hypermedia Systems (OHS) aim to provide efficient dissemination, adaptation and integration of hyperlinked multimedia resources. Content available in Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks could add significant value to OHS provided that challenges for efficient discovery and prompt delivery of rich and up-to-date content are successfully addressed. This paper proposes an architecture that enables the operation of OHS over a P2P overlay network of OHS servers based on semantic annotation of (a) peer OHS servers and of (b) multimedia resources that can be obtained through the link services of the OHS. The architecture provides efficient resource discovery. Semantic query-based subscriptions over this P2P network can enable access to up-to-date content, while caching at certain peers enables prompt delivery of multimedia content. Advanced query resolution techniques are employed to match different parts of subscription queries (subqueries). These subscriptions can be shared among different interested peers, thus increasing the efficiency of multimedia content dissemination

Multi-media electronic mail

Issued as Final report, Project C-43-61

Integrating web services into data intensive web sites

Designing web sites is a complex task. Ad-hoc rapid prototyping easily leads to unsatisfactory results, e.g. poor maintainability and extensibility. However, existing web design frameworks focus exclusively on data presentation: the development of specific functionalities is still achieved through low-level programming. In this paper we address this issue by describing our work on the integration of (semantic) web services into a web design framework, OntoWeaver. The resulting architecture, OntoWeaver-S, supports rapid prototyping of service centred data-intensive web sites, which allow access to remote web services. In particular, OntoWeaver-S is integrated with a comprehensive web service platform, IRS-II, for the specification, discovery, and execution of web services. Moreover, it employs a set of comprehensive site ontologies to model and represent all aspects of service-centred data-intensive web sites, and thus is able to offer high level support for the design and development process

Decentralized Network Management Using Web-Based Technologies

The emerging Web-based proposals for network management are a promising approach for managing distributed and heterogeneous computer networks. This paper discusses how these technologies can be used to implement the Management by Delegation decentralised paradigm (MbD, introduced by Yemini and Goldszmidt). Managers and agents can benefit from the ease of use and platform-independence of Web-based protocols and tools while supporting the essential feature of MbD: elasticity

Towards a Framework for Developing Mobile Agents for Managing Distributed Information Resources

Distributed information management tools allow users to author, disseminate, discover and manage information within large-scale networked environments, such as the Internet. Agent technology provides the flexibility and scalability necessary to develop such distributed information management applications. We present a layered organisation that is shared by the specific applications that we build. Within this organisation we describe an architecture where mobile agents can move across distributed environments, integrate with local resources and other mobile agents, and communicate their results back to the user

An ontological framework for contextualising information in hypermedia systems

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Engineering.The Internet has become part of everyday modern life. A central component of the Internet is the World Wide Web. With hundreds of millions of users trying to find information they need amongst billions of pages, there is an urgent need for tools that help users find the information they need. A key element in assisting users find information is their context. Being able to model and store a user's context provides information about the user that can be used to augment their information-seeking behaviours. This work investigated the hypothesis that it is possible to create an ontology of context that can be used to create tools that users perceive to be useful and easy to use when performing information-seeking behaviours on the World Wide Web. This hypothesis was investigated through three research stages. First, a concept of context was developed that applies to information-seeking behaviours on the World Wide Web. Next, this concept was modelled using an ontology, and a software framework was created based on this ontology. This framework was used to create tools that augment the information-seeking behaviours of users of the World Wide Web. Finally, an empirical evaluation of these tools was performed to determine if they were perceived to be useful and easy to use. The results of the evaluation indicate that the tools constructed were perceived to be useful and easy to use, providing evidence that supports the validity of the hypothesis. This outcome encourages further research and development into using an ontology of context to develop tools that help people using the World Wide Web to find the information that they need