HOSS: an environment to support structural computing
Peter John Nuernberg · Medical Entomology and Zoology · 1998
There have been two distinct trends in hypermedia work over the last decade. One has concerned the construction of increasingly more powerful infrastructure for the support of open hypermedia navigation systems, while the other has concerned the application of hypermedia technologies and concepts to increasingly diverse domains. This dissertation addresses how these trends can be merged, resulting in a framework for design of powerful, general infrastructure. An examination of the domains to which hypermedia concepts have been applied yields to the conclusion that all rely on general structure and general structural computation. A philosophy of computation is presented called structural computing that stresses the primacy of these concepts. Without such a philosophy, structure is seen as an ad hoc functionality to be added over data-oriented programs. Different structure-oriented domains are seen as special cases of navigational hypertext, with a corresponding confusion of basic terminologies. An analysis of the historical development of hypermedia systems leads to the conclusion that current open hypermedia systems can be modified in a straightforward way to support structural computing by opening the link server layer in traditional hypermedia architectures. The resultant generalized link server is called a structure processor (Sproc). Different Sprocs encapsulate tailoring and extension of the structure and structural computation models provided by the structure store of the system. A conceptual architecture for an environment to support structural computing (named HOSS) is presented. This architecture is divided into two parts. The operating system layer describes the basic services available to all HOSS programs. The computing environment layer consists of an open set of programs that run address specific structural computing domains. A prototypic implementation of the operating system layer and several example computing environment layer programs is described, which provides a proof of concept of the structural computing environment architecture presented. The sample programs substantiate the claims that such an environment can support the design and implementation of a wide variety of structural computing programs. The dissertation concludes with an evaluation of the philosophy of structural computing and the design and implementation of HOSS, a description of directions for possible future work, and conclusions.