Towards Hypermedia Support for Database Systems

Using a dynamic hypermedia engine (DHE), we propose to automate the following features for database systems, both on and off the Web. First we automatically generate links based on the database's relational (physical) schema and its original (non-normalized) entity-relationship specification. Second, the application developer can specify which kinds of database elements are related to diverse elements in the same or different database application, or even another software system. Our current DHE prototype illustrates these for a relational database management system. We propose integrating data warehousing applications into the DHE. We also propose incorporating data mining as a new kind of automated link generation. Passing the application element selected by a user, a data mining system that would discover interesting relationships for that element. DHE would then map each relationship to a link.