Hypertext has been a subject of research for more than thirty years. Hypermedia is hypertext extended with multimedia data types such as video, image, audio, and so on. Earlier hypermedia systems lack commonality among themselves and capability for accomodating recent multimedia, network, and database technologies. They lack capability for data interchange among different systems and multimedia synchronization. They do not provide advanced database features like query capability either.
In this thesis, we describe the design and implementation of a new hypermedia system that overcomes limitations of earlier systems. The characteristics of the system are as follows. First, it has been designed according to the Dexter hypertext reference model in order to have commonality with future hypermedia systems. The Dexter model requires a layered architecture, so that modification in one layer of the system has little influence on the other layers. Second, it has been designed based on the MHEG(Multimedia and Hypermedia information coding Expert Group) standard, so that data interchange and synchronization facilities can be easily added. Finally, it has been built on top of an object-oriented DBMS for an efficient search and safety of stored data.
