The Dortmund Family of Hypermedia Models - Concepts and their Application

This paper presents the Dortmund Family of Hypermedia Models (DFHM). Existing formal models for hypermedia mostly lack the flexibility and adaptability and, often not more than one existing system conforms to such a model. The DFHM overcomes this drawback by means of optional and alternative data types. The conformance of a hypermedia system to the DFHM can be conditionalised upon one member of the family. The DFHM has been formalised in VDM, but the aim of this paper is to give an informal overview of the main concepts. Therefore, any formalisms are omitted here. The first part of the paper deals with hypermedia fundamentals from a conceptual perspective. Apart from basic concepts, e.g. nodes and links, also structuring concepts, e.g. views, folders and others, are discussed in detail. Some examples are given to convey how models for existing hypermedia systems can be derived from the DFHM. The second part demonstrates the power of these concepts by introducing main features of a hypermedia system that has been developed for the use in educational settings. This hypermedia system bases upon a member of the DFHM.