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3.3.4. IM Integration (Phase 4)

Figure 5 illustrates three forms of future integration design. These models are not defined as well as those previously discussed and, in effect, represent a future enabling technology. By design and definition, they are a robust implementation of Phase 3, HM integration concepts and models.

As defined earlier, IM is a fully integrated knowledge- and HM-based development and delivery system that contains embedded intelligence for static and dynamic multimodal (textual, visual, and auditory) information and knowledge management, sharing, and display. By definition, these systems allow distributed multiple user, bidirectional access to all forms of MM and possess unrestricted, intelligent association-linking between elements.

These futuristic IM integration forms have several functional features in common. They allow system developers and users to share ES/MM information and knowledge representations, offer communication via the dual nature of their structures and networks, and fully support cooperative reasoning. They also possess "interoperability," which implies the seamless connection of distributed, heterogeneous information and knowledge resources. The term "interoperability" designates a need; however, it is a capability associated with very few real application solutions. While IM systems share common functionality, several models and implementations are possible.

Form 4a in Figure 5, a full integration model, allows total integration in an autonomous, stand-alone manner. Full and seamless integration is achieved through a shared data and knowledge representation structure and inherent linked communications. Among design goals of this model are easier system design, "seamless modularity," and autonomous, unrestricted user control.

This design is best illustrated by the object-oriented hypermedia support systems (HSS) conceptual model developed by Garrity and Volonino (1993). HSS is a hybrid system that provides user access to MM information and knowledge through the integration of three software technologies: hyper-navigational user control, MM, and object-orientated programming. Hyper-navigation, which allows branching to any MM information and knowledge node in an HM network, provides users with intuitive and flexible access. MM of various types exist at various nodes within the system. An object-oriented methodology using software topics is the integrating mechanism for this virtual information system. These software topics include program code, window or screen objects, production rules, MM objects, database information, and meta-knowledge and meta-information (Garrity and Volonino, 1993).

Another IM integration model, Form 4b, supports direct user interfacing to an intelligent database engine. This engine would need to have the capability to implement the features of a deductive, object-oriented intelligent database model. For those working on intelligent database engines, HM has important object-oriented database implications. For example, current relational databases cannot directly support natural representations of graph-structured object spaces. As a result, complex relationships between MM products and objects cannot be expressed directly.

Object-oriented databases form an important and necessary phase in the evolution of databases and data models. Integration will be required in such diverse fields as object-oriented concepts, ES, HM, and information retrieval. The future of these systems lies in intelligent databases that provide new technologies for information management presently and into the 21st Century.

Form 4c is a full IM model not yet modeled which cannot be fully defined or described. Basically, it is an ideal system that provides system developers and users with a full range of functionalities. This hypothetical system includes user independent, bidirectional natural language (or virtual reality interfaces) and full-bandwidth network access.

Various concepts of future intelligent computer systems will require features for such systems. They include MM database capabilities that create, import, store, retrieve, edit, and delete a full range of MM information. Virtual reality features are included; these transform the user into a simulated world. Intelligent agent enhancements that mimic intelligence and provide personalized services tailored to specific user needs.

As with other models in this category, the system possesses intelligent inferencing capabilities to represent specific and general knowledge and a full range of rich capabilities to accommodate multiple user attributes, preferences, capabilities, goals, and objectives. The systems's information annotation and navigational utilities will prevent users from becoming lost in "virtual hyperspace."

As requisite individual and integrated capabilities become a practical reality, these advanced Phase 4 IM models will provide users with multisensory, nonlinear, highly interactive, edit-oriented, multi-user capabilities. Virtual reality and other 3-D perspective systems that are presently evolving, display objects in ways that take advantage of our natural binocular vision (i.e., stereopsis) to create an illusion of depth. In the future, the expanded depth provided by 3-D will provide a much richer dimension to science, industry, and medical applications. Until then, other contemporary integration models must suffice.

The software architectures, orientations, and system integration models presented in this section provided a framework for descriptive analysis and feature definition. The following section briefly identifies application domains and some representative integrated ES/MM examples.


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