Towards hypermedia support in database systems

Abstract

The general goal of our research is to automatically generate links and other hypermedia related services to analytical applications. Using a dynamic hypermedia engine (DHE), the following features have been automated for database systems. Based on the database\u27s relational (physical) schema and its original (non-normalized) entity-relationship specification links are generated, database application developers may also specify the relationship between different classes of database elements. These elements can be controlled by the same or different database application, or even by another software system. A DHE prototype has been developed and illustrates the above for a relational database management system. The DHE is the only approach to automated linking that specializes in adding a hyperlinks automatically to analytical applications that generate their displays dynamically (e.g., as the result of a user query). The DHE\u27s linking is based on the structure of the application, not keyword search or lexical analysis based on the display values within its screens and documents. The DHE aims to provide hypermedia functionality without altering applications by building application wrappers as an intermediary between the applications and the engine