Using the Flag Taxonomy to Study Hypermedia System Interoperability

Interoperability between existing systems, program packages, tools and applications with various degrees of hypermedia awareness is a complex and important challenge facing the hypermedia community. This paper presents a general framework (called the Flag Interoperability Matrix) to discuss and examine hypermedia system interoperability based on the concepts and principles of the Flag taxonomy of open hypermedia systems. The purposes of the Flag Interoperability Matrix are to provide a framework to classify, describe concisely and compare different approaches to hypermedia system interoperability, and provide an overview of the design space of hypermedia system interoperability. The Flag Interoperability Matrix is used to examine existing interoperability approaches. Based on a systematic analysis of possible approaches to hypermedia system interoperability, the paper explores one solution to hypermedia system interoperability that seems particularly promising with respect to handling the growing number of applications with increasing but incomplete awareness of hypermedia structure concepts.