Problem Statement

Today, one of the major problems, when it comes to control of information, is how we organize and interact with information. Normally we try to interact with information (documents) by making use of applications. However, this impose severe problems on complexity of the applications, if they are to be able to interpret all kinds of information. One way to solve this is by making use of compound documents. In an environment with compound documents, the functionality for interacting with information is encapsulated in specific components (part handlers). The applications can then be built upon these part handlers. However, we will still be stuck in a centralized environment, with all control of information put into the applications. A solution to this problem would be to give documents a chance to be masters of their own data, including functionality. We call this solution active documents. The intent of the thesis is to define and evaluate the importance of active documents in a distributed environment.


Abstract

Active documents is a technique for automating the handling of access and interaction with documents by making the documents a combination of service provider and resource in the form of autonomous agents. The main focus of this solution is to provide a consistent encapsulation of documents, including their data structures and related functionality, but also to enable documents to reflect upon themselves in respect of their computational environment.

General Information