Patterns of message interchange in decoupled hypermedia systems

Open hypermedia systems provide a decoupled approach to structural computing. This entails that the architecture of the systems are made up of user agents that communicate with distributed link servers. This in turn raises the consideration of the different message exchange patterns that may be implemented in such interaction, which determines the behaviour of systems according to them. The definition of such exchange patterns is critical if interoperability and flexibility are design objectives. This paper describes a structural model for such kind of message patterns, and provides a list of possible courses of interaction. Then, the influence of such heterogeneity of communication patterns is analyzed from the perspective of composing structure in hypermedia, and a framework for their integration is sketched. This represents a first attempt to advance current Service-Oriented specifications for decoupled hypermedia to cover the heterogeneity of potentially diverging system behaviours.