HyOctane: a HyTime engine for an MMIS

ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 1986

This article presents a case study of the development of the Intermedia system, a large, object-oriented hypermedia system and associated applications development framework providing sophisticated document linkages. First it presents the educational and technological objectives underlying the project. Subsequent sections capture the process of developing the Intermedia product and detail its architecture and construction, concentrating on the areas in which object-oriented technology has had a significant role. Finally, the successes and failures of the development approach are examined, and several areas of standardization and research that would enhance the process are proposed.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1997

This paper describes the development of a multimedia information server that supports state-of-the-art distributed applications. This is achieved through techniques for efficient storage management of large objects, the provision of real-time data pumps controlled by scheduling mechanisms, multimedia object modelling and ODBMS functionality for the manipulation of objects. The system delivers MPEG-2 video and audio streams to multiple clients and supports browsing on the components of HTML documents and on MPEG-2 video sequences. The server functionality is exported as a proprietary application development interface in a sophisticated client subsystem. Current research focus is on content-based browsing and retrieval techniques as well as for the completion of the implementation of the DAVIC-compliant server functionality of the system.

1999

Existing multimedia document models like HTML, MHEG, SMIL, and HyTime lack appropriate modeling primitives that meet speci c requirements given by advanced multimedia information system applications. In traditional multimedia applications, multimedia document models just had to cope with the modeling of the temporal, spatial, and interactive course of a multimedia presentation. However, we seriously question whether existing models t the needs of next generation multimedia applications that bring up requirements like reusability of multimedia content in di erent presentations and contexts, and adaptation to user preferences. In this paper, we motivate and present new requirements stemming from advanced multimedia applications and the resulting consequences for multimedia document models. Along these requirements, we discuss HTML, HyTime, MHEG, SMIL, and Z Y X, a new model that has been developed with special focus on reusability and adaptation. The analysis and comparison of the models show the limitations of existing models, point the way to the need for new exible multimedia document models, and throw light on the many implications on authoring systems, multimedia content management, and presentation.

IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 2001

AbstractÐAdvanced multimedia applications require adequate support for the modeling of multimedia content by multimedia document models. More and more this support calls for not only the adequate modeling of the temporal and spatial course of a multimedia presentation and its interactions, but also for the partial reuse of multimedia documents and adaptation to a given user context. However, our thorough investigation of existing standards for multimedia document models such as HTML, MHEG, SMIL, and HyTime leads to us the conclusion that these standard models do not provide sufficient modeling support for reuse and adaptation.

Most hypermedia systems have been developed as a unique and self-contained application preventing information interchange and code reusability between applications. To address this problem, a generic layered architecture for hypermedia systems with four major interfaces is first introduced. The architecture adequately uses the MHEG proposal to provide the desired independence between hypermedia applications' conceptual models and storage strategies for hypermedia objects. Then, some design problems of the topmost layer, using as example the nested context hypermedia model, are discussed. Finally, motivated by the fact that a distributed environment may be necessary to meet the real time requirements of hypermedia applications, some issues concerning the design of a distributed system based on the proposed architecture are briefly addressed.

Telematics and Informatics, 1996

This paper deals with models for storing and presenting multimedia documents integrating large amounts of data of different types. Usually, multimedia systems integrate a variety of data such as voice, graphics, text video and other types of images into a single document. Most of these data are not structured and therefore require a huge storage capacity. Such a requirement causes many problems for traditional database management systems which were not originally designed to manipulate data other than text. The presentation of multimedia documents incorporates documentary research that depends upon storage model and mechanisms. In this paper, we present two data storage models and several other associated models for the presentation of multimedia documents. The analysis of these models reveals their capacity to synchronize various temporal scenarios while allowing users simultaneous and secure access to multimedia systems.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1996

This paper is about GLASS 2 , a distributed multimedia system that is currently under development. The multimedia department of the IBM European Networking Center in Heidelberg, Germany, participates in the project along with other industrial and university partners. GLASS is an acronym for GLobally Accessible ServiceS, expressing the system's wide range of possible applications. Interactive TV scenarios can be presented as well as multimedia applications for interactive learning and games for entertainment. Clients for standard telecommunications services like FAX and E-mail can be included as well as presentation components providing access to hypertext-oriented internet services like WWW. The system's components can be highly distributed using networks with TCP/IP. An application is driven by MHEG-encoded presentations that allow for the definition of sophisticated presentations. The system comprises multiple server and client components. All components can be operated on a mix of different platforms. Although running on different operating systems, all clients have the same look and feel which is defined completely by the MHEG presentation.

1999

Existing languages, formats, and multimedia document models such as HTML, MHEG, SMIL, HyTime, SGML, and XML, do not provide the appropriate modeling primitives needed to provide adequate support for reusability, interaction, adaptation, and presentation-neutral description of the structure and content of multimedia documents as required in the Cardio-OP project. Since each of these models lacks some signi cant concepts and does not meet all of the requirements, we propose a new approach for the semantic modeling of multimedia content, the Z Y X model, which we implemented on the basis of an object-relational database system. The approach taken allows for ne-grained representation and retrieval of structures and layout of multimedia material, for exible on-the-y composition of multimedia fragments in order to create individualized multimedia documents, and for the realization of adaptation and personalization of multimedia presentations depending on the user environment speci ed by means of user pro les.

1999

Advanced multimedia applications require adequate support for the modeling of multimedia information but also an adequate database technology supporting the integrated management, retrieval, delivery, and even the presentation of such m ultimedia information. In our Cardio-OP project within the application domain of cardiac surgery, w e are developing concepts and prototypical implementations of a database system-driven multimedia repository that gives this comprehensive support. In the project context, we h a ve been developing the Z Y X data model that meets the speci c requirements of reusability, interaction, adaptation, and presentation-neutral description of the structure and content of multimedia documents. For the multimedia repository, hence, we need to select database system technology for the implementation of the Z Y X model for multimedia documents and | with regard to our future work | for the retrieval, browsing, delivery, and presentation of the multimedia documents. In this paper, we present our approach to implement the Z Y X data model for multimedia documents and presentations using object-relational database technology. Hereby, w e exploit the features and experience the limitations of object-relational database system technology in comprehensively supporting multimedia applications.