Integration and cooperation of media types

Abstract

Media types are a core design construct in the co-design approach for web information systems (WISs). They provide abstract means for describing content, functionality, context and adaptivity to user preferences and intentions, end-devices, and channel limitations. Basically, a media type is a view that is extended by operations and cohesion. Thus, the problem of integrating these extended views is a core design problem for WISs. In this paper we develop formal transformation rules for media type integration that are embedded in a pragmatic method addressing how they should be applied for integration. They extend view integration rules in such a way that operations and cohesion are dealt with simultaneously. Cooperation provides an alternative to integration in which the integrated view is only virtual, i.e. the constituating views are kept and exchange functions are designed to provide the same functionality as if the views were integrated. We show that the transformation rules can also be applied to the problem of media type cooperation.