KMS: a distributed hypermedia system for managing knowledge in organizations

Robert M. Akscyn, Donald L. McCracken, Elise A. Yoder
1988 Communications of the ACM  
KMS is a commercial hypermedia system developed by Knowledge Systems for networks of heterogeneous workstations. It is designed to support organization-wide collaboration for a broad range of applications, such as electronic publishing, software engineering, project management, computer-aided design and on-line documentation. KMS is a successor to the ZOG system developed at Carnegie Mellon University from 1972 to 1985. A KMS database consists of screen-sized WYSIWYG workspaces called frames
more » ... t contain text, graphics and image items. Single items in frames can be linked to other frames. They may also be used to invoke programs. The database can be distributed across an indefinite number of file servers and be as large as available disk space permits. Independently developed KMS databases can be linked together. The KMS user interface uses an extreme form of direct manipulation. A single browser/editor is used to traverse the database and manipulate its contents. Over 85% of the user's interaction is direct--a single point-and-click designates both object and operation. Running on Sun and Apollo workstations, KMS accesses and displays frames in less than one second, on average. This paper describes KMS and how it addresses a number of hypermedia design issues.
doi:10.1145/48511.48513 fatcat:xyl2lnbsq5bo3m4fzmuuoopqee