Chimera: Hypertext for Heterogeneous Software Environments

Kenneth M. Anderson, Richard N. Taylor, E. James Whitehead, Jr.
Department of Information and Computer Science
University of California, Irvine

Abstract

Emerging software development environments are characterized by heterogeneity: they are composed of diverse object stores, user interfaces, and tools. This paper presents an approach for providing hypertext services in this heterogeneous setting. Central notions of the approach include the following. Anchors are established with respect to interactive views of objects, rather than the objects themselves. Composable, n-ary links can be established between anchors on different views of objects stored in distinct object bases. Viewers (and objects) may be implemented in different programming languages afforded by a client-server architecture. Multiple, concurrently active viewers enable multimedia hypertext services. The paper describes the approach and presents an architecture which supports it. Experience with the Chimera prototype and its relationship to other systems is described.

Categories and Subject Descriptors
H.5.1 [Multimedia information systems]
D.2.2 [Software Engineering] Tools and techniques
I.7.2 [Document preparation] Hypertext/hypermedia
General Terms Design, Experimentation
Additional Key Words and Phrases heterogeneous hypertext, hypertext system architectures, link servers, separation of concerns, software development environments.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Hypertext Concepts
  3. Conceptual Architecture
    1. Chimera Server
    2. Process Invoker
    3. Chimera Client
    4. External Systems
  4. Implementation Architecture
    1. Chimera Server
    2. Process Invoker
    3. Chimera Client
    4. External Systems
    5. Metrics
  5. Future Work
    1. Versioning
    2. Collaborative Hyperweb Construction
  6. Related Work
    1. The Dexter Hypertext Reference Model
    2. Virtual Notebook System
    3. Sun's Link Service
    4. Hyperform
    5. Microcosm
    6. System Prototype 0, 1, 2, and 3
  7. Conclusions
  8. Acknowledgments
  9. References
This material is based upon work sponsored by the Advanced Research Projects Agency under Grant Number MDA972-91-J-1010. The content of the information does not necessarily reflect the position or the policy of the Government and no official endorsement should be inferred.

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Last updated on Thu, Sep 19, 1996 at 12:34:39 PM.