An architectural model for application integration in open hypermedia environments

This paper provides an architectural framework for modeling third-party application integrations with open hypermedia systems, which collects and extends the integration experience of the open hypermedia community. The framework is used to characterize applications prior to integration, and describe the qualities of a complete integration. Elements of the architectural model are artists, which are used to manipulate anchors, links, and native application objects; communicators, which manage information flow to and from the open hypermedia system; and containers which group the other elements. Prior integration experience is collected in a standard way using the model. Guidance in selecting the final integration architecture is provided by this prior integration experience, in conjunction with the degree of difficulty of an integration, which is related to the integration architecture.