Logic programming based information management tools for hypermedia systems

Abstract

The availability of a large amount of on-line information has created a pressing problem of its maintenance and usability. This thesis presents an open architecture of a general framework, knowledge based hypermedia (kbh), in which a hypermedia system and a knowledge based system (kbs) are loosely coupled together. By adopting such a heterogeneous framework and an open architecture approach we aim to attack two problems. Firstly, to overcome a limitation of logic programming by providing loose coupling to conventional language applications which allows the power of logic programming techniques to be exploited for kbs development without undue consideration of interface questions. Secondly, by coupling a kbs to a hypermedia system, to provide domain independent kbs tools to provide additional facilities for managing the information stored in the hypermedia system. This thesis presents a range of logic programming based kbs tools for managing information in hypermedia. The tools allow non-typical styles of presenting information in hypermedia systems and make the available information more applicable and more understandable. The kbs tools concern ways to assimilate and retrieve documents in hypermedia systems. A semi-automatic method to assimilate new documents is proposed. The method is rather general, allowing the documents to be labelled with a proof tree generated in an interactive session with the kbs. The method of labelling then allows retrieval of documents according to a natural generalisation ordering based on this label and obviates the need to explicitly add new link information when new documents are added. A key benefit of kbh is that it offers a better environment for understanding on-line information than kbs or hypermedia individually. Particularly, the newly developed tools for information management offer a basis for solving disorientation, cognitive overhead and other navigational problems of hypermedia systems. These tools also provide active document features and an intelligent database retrieval environment which enhance the usability of hypermedia systems. In the reverse direction the presence of hypermedia increases the behavioural expressiveness of a kbs. The applicability of kbh and the newly developed tools are demonstrated in a legal domain

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