Intelligent Computation of Presentation Documents

Intelligent presentation of data requires exibility of expression based on user needs and data content, both of which evolve. This exibility is not ooered by the current generation of database management systems. To address this problem systematically we are developing editing tools to quickly build intelligent, user-tailored presentation systems for databases. Our presentation systems are called computational registers (registers). We describe registers as an architecture for generating documents that summarize data with a particular class of user in mind. A system to manage creation and maintenance of registers is a register system. We describe DEXTER, our own register system currently under development.