The Hyper-G Network Information System

As the Internet continues to experience exponential rates of growth, attention is shifting away from mainstream network services such as electronic mail and file transfer to more interactive information services. Current network information systems, whilst extremely successful, run into problems of fragmentation, consistency, scalability, and loss of orientation.The development of 'second generation' network information systems such as Hyper-G can help overcome these limitations. Of particular note are Hyper-Gs tightly-coupled structuring, linking, and search facilities, its projection of a seamless information space across server boundaries with respect to each of these facilities, and its support for multiple languages. The Harmony client for Hyper-G utilises two and three-dimensional visualisations of the information space and couples location feedback to search and link browsing operations, in order to reduce the likelihood of disorientation. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of Hyper-G and Harmony.