THE MOTION PICTURE PARADIGM FOR MANAGING
INFORMATION
A Framework and Approach to Supporting the Play and Replay of
Information in Computerised Information Systems
Bing Wu, Kudakwashe Dube
School of Computing, Dublin Institute of Technology, kevin Street, Dublin, D 8, Ireland
Essam Mansour
School of Computing, Dublin Institute of Technology, kevin Street, Dublin, D 8, Ireland
Keywords: Motion picture paradigm, information scene, information management, information visualisation.
Abstract: The ability of Information Systems to provide a continuous, on-the-fly and playable information scene for
any specified review period of arbitrary time granularity would help to enhance the reporting and decision-
support capabilities of CIS. This paper presents a new paradigm, called the motion picture paradigm, for
information management. The paradigm views an organisation’s database and information system as a
mechanism for recording motion pictures of organisational information scenes that can be queried and
presented through on-the-fly, dynamic and interactive play and re-play operations.
1 INTRODUCTION
A key goal for computerised information systems is
to facilitate an easy production of reports that
present decision-support information to
organisational management. Typically, such reports
are periodic reports that give only a snapshot of the
status of an organisation at a particular date.
Combining information visualisation and databases
would present huge benefits in terms of information
organisation, presentation and interpretation (Owor
2002). While live interaction (Wesson and Warren
2001) and visualisation (Shen and Eades 2005) of
data have been investigated, the ability to provide a
permanent live interactive record of information that
can be queried, played and replayed has not been
investigated thoroughly up to now.
This paper presents a new paradigm, called the
motion picture paradigm, which views an
organisation’s database and information system as
mechanisms for recording dynamic and interactive
motion pictures of organisational information. The
dynamic and interactive playing and replying of
information scenes is a key aspect of this paradigm
and perspective to information and knowledge
management. In this paper, information scene is
defined as a multi-dimensional information space
whose composite elements and dimensions interact
dynamically to make up a meaningful domain
information scenario that can be formally specified.
Experience from our earlier work (Wu, Mansour
et al. 2007; Dube 2004; Wu and Dube 2001) reveals
that presentation, analysis and review of information
can be significantly simplified and enhanced through
a new paradigm that combines information
visualisation with allowing information to be
managed, played and replayed in a dynamic and
interactive manner on the basis of a formally
constructed and meaningful domain information
scene.
2 RELATED WORK
The concept of playing information has been
investigated in a number of application domains.
Consequently, a number of approaches and methods
of supporting information play and replay has
emerged (Manohar and Prakash 1994; Ronsse and
Bosschere 1999; Brown and Patterson 2002; Kwon
515
Wu B., Dube K. and Mansour E. (2008).
THE MOTION PICTURE PARADIGM FOR MANAGING INFORMATION - A Framework and Approach to Supporting the Play and Replay of Information
in Computerised Information Systems.
In Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - DISI, pages 515-518
DOI: 10.5220/0001715305150518
Copyright
c
SciTePress
and Song 1999; Greenhalgh, Pubrick et al. 2000;
Ouyang, Li et al. 2003; Crowley 1996; Steven,
Chandra et al. 2000). However, it can be noted that
the concept of replay has not yet been fully
investigated in the context of data and information
management.
The need and benefits of a new framework and
paradigm that incorporates
playing and replaying of
information is best appreciated through Hans
Rosling’s GapMinder presentation software for
interactive animated multi-dimensional visualization
of development statistics (Rosling, Rosling
Rönnlund et al. 2005).
Our work investigates the support for replaying
information scenes from real-time systems based on
query-response approach that allows playable scenes
of information to be composed on-the-fly based on
the query specifications.
3 THE MOTION PICTURE
PARADIGM
The key question that we pose here is: Is it possible
to support the capture of data during day-to-day
organisational operations while at the same time
dynamically constructing and presenting the
complete information “picture” or “scene” such
that the effects of the data or information changes
would form a natural aspect of “motion” within the
complete information “picture” or “scene”?
The motion picture paradigm, therefore, aims at
capturing, generating, mining and discovering all
information or knowledge elements that would
constitute a complete “information scene” including
dynamic interconnections between these elements
and these “scenes”.
A key aspect of the paradigm is the concept of
an information scene and its manipulation,
especially its visual presentation to human senses.
Thus, the question arises of the ability to specify a
request or query for the information scene, compose
it on-the-fly and then play and replay it.
4 FRAMEWORK FOR
SUPPORTING THE MOTION
PICTURE PARADIGM
Figure 1 presents authors’ framework that would
allow the Motion Picture Paradigm to be supported
within information systems. The key dimensions,
which are also components that make up the
framework for managing complex information are:
environment, time, information, process and
knowledge. Within a given environment and time
frame, the body of organisational information moves
from one state to another under dynamic impacts of
organisational processes within the contextual
framework of the existing knowledge within the
organisation. Under such a framework, best practice
can be formalised based on experience and
knowledge and then applied to processes and
information, which in turn would enrich it. Processes
and information interact and mutually impact on
each other as they move along possibly multiple
dimensions, e.g., time and other domain-specific
dimensions. Motion in information scenarios could
then be realised and explored along any of these
dimensions. Thus, dynamic “information scenes”
may be composed and manipulated, creating a
foundation for the motion picture paradigm for
managing the information.
Figure 1: Framework for the multi-dimensional
management of information.
5 APPROACH TO REALISING
THE MOTION PICTURE
PARADIGM WITHIN THE
FRAMEWORK
Figure 2 illustrates a scheme for supporting the
information scene. In this scheme, the information
scene (S) is supported by the three dimensions of the
framework, namely, information (I), processes (P)
and knowledge (K), as well as an extra dimension
called meta-information (M). Meta- information (M)
consists of information about the other dimensions
K, I and P as well as the information scene (S).
Suppose we want to play the information scene S:
“What transpired, from a drug versus vital signals
ICEIS 2008 - International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
516
perspective, before a patient started experiencing a
severe complication”. We would require
information on P: “The treatment regime’s execution
process up to the point of interest”, I: “The
electronic patient record”, K: “The best practice
Figure 2: Supporting the “information scene” through four
dimensions.
knowledge used”, and M: “Schemes, definitions and
specifications associated with S, K, I, M and P”. A
comprehensive information scene S could be
composed using data analysis, mining and discovery
techniques and formally specified based on some
meta-information (M) schema. Thus, the resulting
specification is a copy of an information scene that
can be manipulated, shared and played back using
information visualisation technologies.
Figure 3: Conceptual scheme for supporting playing
information within the motion picture paradigm.
Figure 3 illustrates the conceptual scheme for
generically supporting replay for a target
information system. A play request is presented as a
play query that specifies what aspects of the
information are required to be played. Parameters
and conditions may be used to characterise aspects
or dimensions of the information to be played. Such
a query could be specified by the use of what may be
termed as an information play query language. An
analysis of the play query together with mining and
discovery processes leads to a detailed specification
of the playable information scene, which is
expressed in a play specification language. Such a
specification would be submitted to an information
player and used to create the play process and
visualisations, which is effectively the execution of
the replay specification. The replay process would
then present, as a response to the user’s query, the
information play visualisation.
6 APPLICATIONS OF THE
MOTION PICTURE PARADIGM
Application domain of our work so far has mainly
been focused on supporting the management of
complex information in computerised clinical
practice guideline systems. The Motion Picture
Paradigm was initially applied to the TOPS system (
Wu and Dube 2001; Dube 2004) on top of an active
database system and, further developed recently to
the AIMS system implemented with XML and, an
active database system enhanced with temporal
features (Wu, Mansour et al. 2007).
A clinical practice guideline (CPG) is a
systematic set of statements that result from the
formalisation of evidence-based knowledge for
guiding clinicians and patients on how best to
manage patients’ conditions. In our work, formal
specification languages are developed for CPGs
using the active rule paradigm as a core primitive.
The guideline execution engine is an active
electronic healthcare record system based on an
active database. CPG specifications are stored and
maintained over time to accommodate changes and
improvements in best practice knowledge for the
relevant disease category. From the user’s
standpoint, a submission of information replaying
query leads to the dynamic visualisation of the
information visualisation. Thus, the information
replay query is submitted to a replay command
processor, which incorporates data analysis,
information mining and discovery modules to aid the
composition of the playable information scene. The
information replay execution engine uses the
information scene specification to instantiate the
required play process, which is presented to the user
through a play visualisation module. Our
preliminary experience of this approach has proved
promising and pointed to a need for a more vigorous
THE MOTION PICTURE PARADIGM FOR MANAGING INFORMATION - A Framework and Approach to Supporting
the Play and Replay of Information in Computerised Information Systems
517
investigation towards fully realising a
comprehensive implementation of the framework
and applications of this paradigm in other domains.
7 BENEFITS AND FUTURE
WORK
The ability for computerised information systems to
provide a continuous, on-the-fly, dynamic, playable
and visual “information scenes” for any specified
period of arbitrary time granularity would:
1) help organisational management to apprehend
fully the state of affairs in their organisation;
2) allow trends in information to be easily
understood;
3) facilitate important questions to be posed and
answered;
4) facilitate the creation of reports at any time
during business operations.
This work is of particular benefit to the domain of
healthcare where the task of point-of-care review of
a patient’s medical record is made faster and easier
than otherwise if the information were playable from
multiple dimensions
The work presented here is part of on-going
work. The core concepts and methods of the new
paradigm and framework are under further
investigations aimed at giving them a more firm and
formal grounding. A more comprehensive
implementation of the proof-of-concepts prototype
system is in progress focusing on the domain of
clinical practice protocols. This will lead to
evaluation of the core concepts, methods and
approach with assistance from domain experts.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors acknowledge the funding support from
the Arnold Graves Fellowship Trustees and the
Office of Postgraduate Studies and Research at the
Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland.
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