A database design for uniform representation of hypermedia and mathematical models

Semantic data modeling techniques are used to provide a theoretical and applied basis for construction of hypermedia systems which incorporate mathematical models. Traditional hypermedia systems provide informal modeling tools and fail to represent adequately the concepts which they are intended to organize and present to users. As a result, such systems provide few services, and they must be constructed and applied with considerable manual labor. The components of the hypermedia system, including text, drawings, photographs, video, equations, plots, conceptual models, symbolic manipulations, and simulation, can be described as objects in a database. By applying sound data modeling techniques, behavior, structure, and association among concepts are formally described. Data manipulation techniques including query processing, automatic classification, and knowledge discovery can also be applied. A user interface is generated automatically once the underlying structure of concepts in a particular domain is captured in the database. This work is applied to organizing and presenting materials for a graduate level course in biological systems analysis.