BRIDGE LAWS IN HYPERTEXT: A LOGIC MODELING APPROACH

Abstract

Increasingly, computerized systems tend to delegate certain portions of their functionality to other systems. This is routinely done by systems that use Data Base Management Systems (DBMS) to manage their data. The DBMS is in charge of all data related operations. A similar phenomena is emerging in the area of graphical user-interfaces. As more of these delegation phenomena occur, the establishment of flexible communication channels for the different applications becomes increasingly important. We propose to achieve this communication by establishing a set of relationships between the applications. These relationships will be specified by bridge laws, i.e. laws that establish bridges between different domains. We concentrate on a particular example: coupling arbitrary applications to a hypertext user interface. In terms of the discussion above, one of the systems in consideration is fixed. We study the elements that are needed in order to establish effective bridge laws. We do this by defining a general framework and providing two examples. The first example deals with a Data Base Management System, and the second one with a model management system. The examples show that in order to achieve effective interaction between a system and a hypertext interface, some meta-knowledge is required. We extrapolate from our experiments to conclude the type of general properties of bridge laws that are necessary to achieve this high level type of process communication.