This thesis presents the Anita Conti Mapping Server, a Web interface and infrastructure for the creation and presentation of maps using an active, pervasive,multidimensional, global context. For each user, the context contains the parameterizations for every component of the system. In addition, parts of a user???s context may be shared with other users, so that the actions of one user directly affect the look, feel and content of another user???s system, thereby giving new meaning to the term collaborative computing. The mapping server consists of a Web interface, the GMT mapping tools, a database and the Omega typesetting system. Instead of the components being directly attached to each other through point-to-point communication, they are brought together by the context. This approach provides much more flexbility, since new components and new parameters can be more easily added to the overall system, with little or no change to the components already present. The whole infrastructure is built using intensional programming, a form of programming in which software entities are considered to be intensions (in the logical sense), i.e. mappings from contexts to ordinary entities, called extensions. The thesis presents a comprehensive overview of the development of intensional programming, and highlights its relevance for current work in the areas of electronic documents and distributed software configuration management. The mapping server is the most significant intensional application to date: it contains the most number of lines of intensional code ever written with the biggest context space implemented in a real, working system. The thesis focuses on the parameterization of the Web interface, the mapping engine and the generation of correctly typeset labels for maps to create a parameter space that accurately describes these components, and how this parameter space as a whole can be browsed by a user independently or as a member of a collaborative group. This thesis is just the beginning of a new way to look at mapping and proves that focusing on the context allows the creation of powerful extensible software.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/257531 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | Mancilla, Blanca, Computer Science & Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, UNSW |
| Publisher | Awarded by:University of New South Wales. School of Computer Science and Engineering |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Copyright Blanca Mancilla, http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright |
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