Chapter 22: Dynamic Links for Change-sensitive Interaction

Philip Gray, Meurig Sage, Glasgow Interactive Systems Centre, Computing Science Department, University of Glasgow,

UK

1 Introduction

The Paraglide Project has developed a mobile, context-sensitive wireless-enabled computer system for pre- and post- operative data capture and assessment for use by anaesthetists and anaesthetic nurses. To support these activities, we have developed a novel approach to the updating of the system from changes in remote and local data sources, based on a new dynamic link software technology. Our dynamic link architecture provides a set of features not found in similar systems, including the ability to:

• relate data to either remote or local sources using the same approach;

• specify that changes in the source cause either data updates or a change in the likelihood of a data item's value;

• specify that user confirmation, or more complicated interaction, is necessary before the updates or predictions are performed;

• specify the dynamic links in a simple XML-based language and to create the links dynamically at run-time from descriptions in this language.