A version control architecture for advanced hypermedia environments

Version control has been identified as one of the principal research areas to be addressed in the development of the next generation of hypermedia systems. The capabilities that hypermedia provides for manipulating structure over data, combined with the application areas to which hypermedia technology has been applied, create an environment in which version control is critically important. The research presented in this dissertation addresses the version control problem in hypermedia. It describes the design and development of a version control framework targeted for open, extensible hypermedia environments. The primary emphasis in the development of the framework has been to provide the flexibility, tailorability, and scalability required of version control services in the hyperbase management system environment.;The version control framework described in this dissertation is based on a new approach to version control in hypermedia. The version control process is analyzed and functionally partitioned into the categories of intrinsic and application specific version control operations. Intrinsic operations are provided directly within the framework by a hypermedia version server. Application specific version control functionality is implemented within individual client applications. This arrangement enables the framework to offer the flexibility and tailorability required in the hyperbase management system environment while offering the maximum amount of hypermedia version control functionality possible.;The version control framework has been used as a model for the design of version control services for the HB3 hyperbase management system. The design of the HB3 versioned object manager (VOM) is directly based on the version server described in the framework. The VOM, in combination with the HB3 association set manager (ASM), provide complete version support for both data and structural entities in the SP3 advanced hypermedia environment. In addition to serving as a version control model for the hyperbase management system environment, the framework offers a unifying and clarifying context in which the issues of version control in hypermedia can be examined.