HyperStorM—administering structured documents using object-oriented database technology

The objective of the project HyperStorM (’Hypermedia Document Storage and Modeling’) is to use objec~oriented database technology to administer structured documents like SGMLand HyTime-documents. It 1s an asset of formats such as SGML to allow for the seam!ess integration of metainformation, HyTime provides a set of archi~ectural forms, i.e., templates with a predefine semantics to be used in hypermedia documents for scheduling or hyperlinking. to give examples. Requirements. We have identified the following requirements in the context of structured document storage: the database application has to administer documents conformant to arbitrary document-type definit~ons ( DTDs) With regard to declarative access, it must be possible to formulate queries in a more precise way, e.g., by referring to documents’ structure, in order tO COPe with th~ increase of documents in number and size. Updates on documents are advantageous as, first,, it may be pointless to only insert entire documents when considering certain document types, such as encyclopedia or codes of law. Second, t“ormats such as SGML are m use to capture structured reformation going beyond the conventional notion of ‘document,’. Document components’ semantics should be available within the dat,abase application to ensure adequate performance, and to allow for querying based on such concepts Finally, we think that. wnth regard to access vm the WWW documents’ conversion to HTML should take place at the server site: transformation of docume~ts might not be straightforward, hut may instead be driven by the database context. Then, the process is more efficient when carried out in the database. System Overview. Due to the dynamic nature of the sys~em. most structures comprising the document conrent have to be generated at mntime. & a first