Research
My Research Interests include
- Web Engineering: Web Engineering can be defined as “1) the application of systematic and quantifiable approaches (concepts, methods, techniques, tools) to cost-effective requirements analysis, design, implementation, testing, operation, and maintenance of high-quality Web applications. 2) Web Engineering is also the scientific discipline concerned with the study of these approaches.” (Web Engineering, Wiley Inc.). I have co-edited two books on Web Engineering (see dpunkt.Verlag and Wiley). The core argument structure underlying both of these books are software engineering activities such as requirements analysis, design, architectural design, implementation, testing, maintenance, etc. and to analysis these with the specific characteristics of Web applications in mind. See also the portal www.web-engineering.at.
- Digital Content Engineering (DCE): With DCE I would argue, one can address the issue of complexity that arises by today’s content-driven information systems. We have defined DCE as “the application of systematic and quantifiable approaches (concepts, methods, techniques, tools) along the content value chain, i.e., content acquisition, value adding, and distribution and delivery, in order to support re-use and tailorability for media-rich publications.” (DCE, 2004). Digital Content Engineering is one of the key drivers behind Salzburg NewMediaLab, Austria’s Competence Centre for New Media.
Additionally, I would argue that digital content engineering is related to enterprise content management: and both can be seen as a technical and methodological basis for media and knowledge management. - Open Hypermedia Systems Early hypertext systems were monolithic and closed, but newer systems tend to be open, distributed, and support collaboration. While this development has resulted in increased openness and flexibility, integrating or adapting various different tools, such as content editors or viewers was a tedious task. Many developers were implementing essentially similar components, simply for the benefit of having their own platform on which to experiment with hypertexts. In 1996, at the Second Workshop on Open Hypermedia Systems, Hugh Davis presented the first draft of a protocol named the Open Hypermedia Protocol (see also The OHP pages for a brief history). Based on that idea, several research issues were raised, e.g., reference architecture, scope of the protocol, other protocols, etc. A research direction that had its origin in these interoperability issues is structural computing, see e.g. the Metainformatics Symposium. Conference-wise, the ACM Hypertext conference series addresses OHS; from-time-to-time also the World-wide Web conferences; and there is the New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia as a journal.
- User Trails and collaborative information sharing: People are confronted with ever growing amounts of information. This makes it increasingly difficult to navigate vast information spaces in order to find appropriate information. User trails provide a mechanism that allows people not only to better manage their personal information spaces but also to ask questions such as “where do other people go from here”, “what else should I read?” or “how did we come to that conclusion?”. The fact that trails are built with information about the users’ browsing paths and activities makes them well suited for collaborative applications where users with similar interests are to be matched. Projects that address theses issues are MEMOIR (supported by the European Union in the ESPRIT Programme) and Trailist (supported by the Austrian Science Fund, FWF).
See the list of publications for more details.
