Guenter Hilmer - Phd Thesis - Glamorgan Dspace - University of ...

4.6 Content space 4 HEAT
4.6 Content space
The content space as defined in 3.7 is implemented into the HEAT as a prototype
and will be described in the following paragraphs.
The technical solution is implemented with a relational database. This database
is part of the JBuilder 3 package and implemented in Java. All the information
created with the HEAT is stored in tables and can be accessed by dynamically
created queries.
The insertion of new or additional material into the content space is very important
for the HEAT. Several different approaches are possible, but only one has been im-
plemented into the HEAT. This implementation adds new material to the content
space every time the author produces a new EM for delivery on the presumption
that such material is authored correctly. This is done by adding the information
to the database that forms the technical representation of the content space for the
HEAT.
Other approaches could include external interfaces, e.g. data import from other
authoring systems. However, extensive research in this domain is left for future
work (cf. section 9.2).
The search for already existing material in the content space is crucial if the author
wants to reuse some pre-existing material. For this PhD project the search is
implemented as a dynamic query search for every EHP-information described in
3.4. However, the development of more sophisticated search algorithms is left for
future work (cf. section 9.2).
Once the author finds some material in the content space he can reuse this material.
He can import the material he wants to reuse by selecting one item from the search
list.
The controlled removal of material from the content space is considered to be out
of scope for this PhD on the presumption that existing educational material is too
valuable to just be deleted or removed. Additionally, it seems more interesting to
invest more research into the possible rating of educational material, but this is
left for future work (cf. section 9.2), too.
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