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NORTHWESTERN OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY
Alva - Enid - Woodward
BENEFIT PACKAGE OVERVIEW
INSURANCE (For more information, go to: http://www.nwosu.edu/Payroll/Insurance.html)
Comprehensive Medical Benefits (Blue Cross Blue Shield of Oklahoma – “BCBSOK”)
Employee coverage paid by NWOSU.
Dependent coverage optional - paid by employee.
Vision Insurance (Vision Service Plan – “VSP”)
Employee coverage paid by NWOSU.
Dependent coverage optional - paid by employee.
Group Term Life Insurance (Standard Life Insurance Co.)
Employee coverage paid by NWOSU.
Voluntary (additional) coverage optional - paid by employee.
Dependent coverage optional - paid by employee.
Long Term Disability – “LTD” – (Standard Life Insurance Co.)
Basic coverage paid by NWOSU after waiting period of 6 full months of full-time employment.
Enhanced benefit optional - additional premium paid by employee (“Buy-Down”)
Dental Insurance (BCBSOK)
Employee and family coverage optional – both paid by employee.
Cancer Insurance (Individual policy sold by American Fidelity Assurance – AFA – during
Option Period only – each October)
Employee and family coverage optional - paid by employee.
Short-term Disability Insurance (Individual policy sold by AFA during Option Period only –
each October)
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RETIREMENT (For more information, go to: http://www.nwosu.edu/Payroll/Retire.html)
OASDI Social Security
6.2% of first $106,800 in 2010 taxable wages paid by employee, matched by NWOSU.
Medicare Tax
1.45% of total 2010 taxable wages paid by employee, matched by the NWOSU.
Oklahoma Teachers Retirement
Vested after 5 years Oklahoma Service in OTR school(s).
Each fiscal year (July – June), Northwestern contributes 7.53% of OTR “contributable salary,”
which includes cost of employer-paid benefits, such as medical, vision, life, LTD and OTR
remittances. The employee is no longer responsible for contributing to the System, as of 7-1-09.
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Optional salary reduction paid by employee; defers federal and state taxes.
OTHER BENEFITS (General information site: http://www.nwosu.edu/Payroll/Regular.html)
Generous Leave Package Library Privileges
Several Paid Holidays Tuition Assistance for Employee, Family
Free Parking Free Employee, Family Membership Wellness Center
Free Employee, Family Admission to Sporting/Other Events
Rev ( 01-10 )
.......... 15
3.4.1.3 Retrieving I-Bit Components ....................................................................... 16
3.4.1.4 Deleting I-Bits .............................................................................................. 17
3.4.1.5 Changing I-Bits ............................................................................................ 17
3.4.2 Do-Restrictgraph .............................................................................................. 18
3.5 I-Management .......................................................................................................... 22
3.6 I-Reach ..................................................................................................................... 23
4 Usage examples ................................................................................................................ 24
5 Bringing it all together ..................................................................................................... 24
Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level - Overview 3
1 Background
Mobile phones get smarter and more powerful for each product generation. New applications
give the owner/user new possibilities to act alone, in connection with other mobile phones, in
connection to downloadable resources (music, e-books, photos, videos, text, …..).
Furthermore, Internet connection opens up a new wealth of possibilities. The distinction
between a mobile phone, a PDA and a laptop is no longer clearly visible. And why should it?
Broad user groups – especially young people – are becoming masters of their equipment. The
capability to approach and easily get the most of new applications is astonishing. Popular
applications spread among the user community at unimaginable speeds. Along comes an
increasing user demand for new and more intelligent applications, applications that mostly
give a well defined service such as e-mail, SMS, games. Adding camera capabilities opens up
new media to the user to manage within the services at hand. Sometimes new applications are
technology driven, in other cases operator driven. New applications also spring up form new
user behaviour and demands that are almost impossible to predict and plan for. Also, in Japan
the mobile phone is to a smaller extent used for talking. Increasingly the focus has changed
towards other types of communication and/or use of applications embedded in the private
phone.
The future is for those open minded. We believe the ever increasing power of the technology
in combination with the widespread usage skills in broad user communities open up for more
advanced services and applications having the capacity to bring the users new levels of
support both for pleasure and at work.
The following sections of this report present and argue for a new type of service to be used by
a wide spectrum of technologies from the smallest mobile phone to the most advanced server.
The type of service opens up a whole new application arena. To some extent it represents a
fully new architecture.
2 Information management
Today, most applications in a mobile phone deal with unstructured information. E-mail
messages, text, photos, voice are examples of the kind. Connecting to Internet opens the door
to all information available there. For the most part unstructured information, e.g. Google.
Structured information is also available for retrieval. However, this information is delivered to
the mobile phone as a chunk with the structure hidden and unable to process. The phone is
often also capable of interacting with the servers using WML but only for predefined
purposes.
An encapsulated phone book, the list of received messages, and the like are examples of
structured information to be managed by the use of predefined applications working with
predefined data structures. The data structures are for the most part (always?) hidden behind
the application interfaces.
Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level - Overview 4
Now to the next level. Why not open up structured information for any type of purpose? The
number of application areas are almost endless. The symbol in figure 1 is in the following
used to indicate any type of structured information.
Figure 1
Why not allow users and user groups to define their own sets of information (figure 2)?
Figure 2
Or, if there is structured information of common interest, why not allow that information to be
shared, either by sending and receiving (figure 3 a) or by pure sharing (figure 3 b).
Figure 3 a Figure 3 b
Obviously, any type of equipment might participate in this information cyberspace (figure 4).
Figure 4
Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level - Overview 5
Endless possibilities for information management, sharing and exchange! Creativity at the
forefront! Millions of skilled users get the same possibility to create new information sets that
can be managed privately in the phone or shared with others. The whole idea behind the
proposal in this paper is to reach a broad community with something easy, yet powerful to
work with. Every success so far for the Internet has been in that realm, i.e. simple, useful,
open, challenging, and unlimited. Just think of HTML.
Is there a need for this new type of service? No doubt. A separate paper “Bringing mobile
phone applications to a new level – Usage Examples” gives examples of some possible user
application areas.
Isn‟t this service just a sort of database management system, something that has been around
for decades? No, the only similarity is in the focus which in both cases is on information
management. But that is all. The proposal approaches information management in a unique
way that makes it an excellent solution for the intended purposes, something ordinary
database approaches cannot do. In fact, the concept “database” is not used at all.
For an information management solution to be attractive on a broad scale it has to be
extremely simple to understand and use, yet powerful in its capabilities. It has to be adapted to
the web and the way the web is being used. The similarity with LEGO and its capacity to
build larger creations from smaller pieces is striking, here applied to the information arena.
The next chapter gives an overview of the features. But first a couple of more questions.
Is a mobile phone the right technology for this type of application? Mobile phone users are
normally also users of computers these days aiming at applications that are transparent to the
medium currently in use. To allow information work on the phone to look similar to the work
on a computer monitor is therefore no obstacle. The opposite. No matter where you act, things
look the same and the actions are done the same way. The only difference is the size of the
screen. This difference can be almost neutralized by allowing zooming capacities and other
mechanisms. Just look at GPS Monitors that usually have small screens but still are capable of
managing large marine charts through smart zooming capabilities.
Isn‟t this just some whim, something new and unproven? The basic features are based on
research and development performed during the last three decades. A number of applications
have been developed. Standards organizations like World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) are
working in similar directions. The really new is the introduction of these features on new
types of equipment for new types of applications. The proposed technology is in fact
representing a whole new mindset.
Time for the era of “infonetting” and “infoweaving”! Time for information capture, retrieval
and management in the hands of a global, broad community!
Let‟s see what the service is all about.
Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level - Overview 6
3 The platform
3.1 Introduction
Let‟s call the platform for „I-Work‟.
In the following features in the platform will be named with prefixes as „I-„, and „Do-„. The intention is
just to indicate – without much thought - that we deal with information and features intended for a broad
user community. A way to package and popularize features to reach out. There are certainly much better
ways in the hand of marketing professionals. Anyway, here we go.
This report only covers the basic facilities of I-Work to give an overview and initial flavour of
its capacities. The complete framework is discussed in a separate report “…..”.
I-Work sits embedded on each mobile phone and any other type of equipment intended for
information management the way proposed below. I-Work is not at be classified as an
application per se but rather as a platform for working with information of any kind.
Interfaces have to be adapted to each type of equipment but the main features will act and
look the same. Operators may well add features based on and using the I-Work capacities to
form certain profiled applications.
I-Work is based on an extremely simple but well proven data structuring approach called the
binary approach. Binary modelling is by no means something new. It has been around and
used for information management for decades for simple as well as very advanced database
applications. Extensive experience has been collected during this time.
The simplicity of binary modelling is most attractive for the intended users. No prior
knowledge is necessary. Furthermore, no technology dependences exist. It is all about
forming and expressing messages and statements almost we do in everyday life. The rules and
syntax are limited to the least possible and can be learnt within minutes. Still, this simplicity
gives surprisingly impressive expressive power that inspires to endless usages. Beginners get
a fast start, the more experienced are stimulated to create ever more advanced usages.
What is completely new however, is using this binary approach in the way proposed, using
mobile phones, for new application areas, aimed at new user communities.
3.2 I-Modelling
3.2.1 An initial example
Suppose there is an interest in remembering or sharing some information about something real
or imaginary for some purpose. The basic construct for expressing facts or opinions about
anything is a statement in which two entities are related by a binary relationship. “Smith lives
in Idaho” is an example of a basic statement. For the rest of this paper we call such a
statement an I-Bit – just to popularize the idea (cf. Lego). „Smith‟ and „Idaho‟ are the entities
(often referred to as the subject entity and object entity). „Lives in‟ is the relationship (often
referred to as the predicate). A typical graphical notation is shown in figure 5.
Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level - Overview 7
Smith lives in Idaho
Figure 5
When we talk about or exchange information about some subject we usually need a number of
I-Bits to express all we want. These I-Bits are related in different ways as they are all about
the same area of interest. Figure 6 shows an example.
Idaho
Snowboarding
lives in likes
111-22-3333
has ssno likes Sailing
Smith
works for Builders
is member of Association
Solid
has
Construction Inc location in Smalltown
Nevada
works for
222-33-4444 lives in Opera
likes
has ssno Jones likes Travel
Oregon
lives in works for
Clark has board
member
has ssno
has board Fast has Middletown
222-33-4444 member Painters Inc location in
Figure 6
This is as easy to read and understand as the same thing in ordinary text format. Probably
much easier and – not the least – with more precise semantics. And no prior knowledge is
needed.
3.2.2 Another way to represent information
An alternative way of expressing the same thing is by distinguishing between concepts and
terms/symbols. Concepts are represented by an internally generated symbol with no meaning
other as a common point of reference. Relationships are given more neutral names just to
show another way of expressing I-Bits. See figure 7.
Both alternatives are perfectly correct.
Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level - Overview 8
Smith
Idaho
last name
state Snowboarding
111-22-3333 interest
ssno
<id> interest Sailing
Solid
Construction Inc employer Builders
association Association
company name
<id>
location Smalltown
Nevada
employer Opera
222-33-4444 state interest
ssno Travel
interest
<id>
last name
Oregon Jones
state board
<id> employer
member
last name
board location Middletown
Clark ssno member <id>
company name
222-33-4444
Fast Painters Inc
Figure 7
3.2.3 I-Bags
In most real cases the number of I-Bits may be thousands or millions. For reasons, that will
soon be explained, this set of statements is called an I-Bag rather than a database, indicating
that the I-Bits are to be seen and managed as a unit, the unit symbolized as a bag.
I-Bags like the one shown in figure 6 are called explicit I-Bags while the I-Bags expressed as
in figure 7 are called implicit I-Bags. Which type to use is a matter of preference. Both have
their advantages and disadvantages (discussed elsewhere). For I-Bags with limited number of
I-Bits as well as most I-Bags for personal use, probably an explicit I-Bag is the common
choice while more structure complex, large I-Bags to be interchanged within some
community are expressed as implicit I-Bags. In fact, a mix of the two is sometimes preferable
and fully acceptable.
In the following, figure 8 will be used to symbolize an I-Bag, no matter the type. Cf. figure 1
above.
Figure 8
Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level - Overview 9
3.2.4 Another example: Movie star information
Let‟s add another application, perhaps more aimed towards young people: A teenager A
wants to manage information about favourite movie stars. The teenager enters and manages
the information of interest into an I-Bag in the mobile phone (usually during subway
travelling?). An extract of the information is shown in figure 9.
Wellington, NZ Australia
born in lives in
Russell Crowe
acts in
acts in
Gladiator
Cinderella man
premiere
acts in directed by
Renée Zellweger
2000
born in premiere
lives in Ridley Scott
directed by
Katy, Texas
main website
USA 2005 Ron Howard
good website
www.cinderellamanmovie.com
www.murphsplace.com/gladiator/main.html
Figure 9
The full I-Bag is obviously much larger. Facilities in I-Work make it easy to find and navigate
portions of current interest. I-Work also includes operations by which the user easily can
extract selected parts of the original I-Bag information into a new I-Bag for further operations.
(See section 3.5 I-Do.). Figure 10 shows one possibility.
Renée Zellweger Russell Crowe
acts in
acts in acts in
Gladiator
Cinderella man
directed by
directed by
Ridley Scott
Ron Howard
Figure 10
After a while, A chooses to add some personal comments on some of the movies as well as on
some of the actor performances. To get this right and unambiguous, A introduces concepts to
represent each performing actor. Without an internally generated symbol for each concept
representing a performing actor, this actor would have to be explicitly named with a
combination of movie name, actor name, and role name. The internal symbol representing a
concept is in this the obvious choice for performing actors while perhaps a movie and an actor
still may be represented by name. Figure 11 shows the idea.
Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level - Overview 10
What I liked the most ….
He made the movie …. ….
Russell Crowe
my opinion
performed by my opinion
Jim Braddock performed by
as
as Maximus
in in
She really performed first class ….
my opinion Cinderella man Gladiator
in
as directed by directed by
Mae Braddock
my review my review
performed by Ron Howard Ridley Scott
Renée Zellweger Moving and …. Powerful, brutal ….
Figure 11
The I-Bag in figure 11 only includes text material. In reality probably also other media
entities such as photos, sound, video, movie clips, and graphics will be included. There is a
wealth of entities of that kind for A to download from the Internet.
Now buddy B starts to get interested in doing the same as A. As most of their interests overlap,
B asks A for an initial load of A‟s information, excluding A‟s personal opinions of the movie
stars performancing in different movies. This is because A and B often have differ in these
opinions. B just wants to add her/his own. An I-Bag without comments is retrieved by an I-Do
operation (see section 3.5) and sent from A to B.
C, D, E, …. enter the arena. They also get an initial I-Bag from A to play around with. Each
person is doing updates on the private phone when a new movie comes along. Sometimes the
buddies share some of this updated information with some of the others in a rather unordered
way by sending extracted I-Bags back and forth. After a while they all have their own and
hardly overlapping content.
D then suggests that instead of each having a perhaps incomplete copy of the information, a
smarter solution would be to create a common shared I-Bag on a server that each buddy is
allowed to contact via Internet. D promises to act as the administrator of the I-Bag. Each
person should be allowed to do some of the updates but leaving downloading from other
sources to D as some translations of the content may be needed. In order for this to work
properly they all have to agree on what types of information to include in the common I-Bag.
Section 3.3.2 below explains how to solve this problem.
3.3 I-Restricts
3.3.1 Working with I-Restricts
So far the content of an I-Bag could be anything – any I-Bits - about something of interest,
without any restrictions. This is fine and preferable in some situations. In others, probably in
many cases where information is to be exchanged, especially on a professional basis, there is
a need to restrict this freedom to a limited set of allowed types of I-Bits. This is done by
specifying a restricting scheme or model called I-Restrict. An I-Restrict is in that respect an
Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level - Overview 11
abstraction of a specific view of something real or imagined of interest. Anyone can define
such an I-Restrict. It may be used privately or among some community to govern and to
restrict what should be allowed to express.
A simplified I-Restrict for the I-Bag in figure 6 is shown in figure 12.
<state name>
lives in
has ssno <person
<ssno> likes <text>
name>
has board works for
member
<company
has location in name> is member of
<city> <text>
Figure 12
A simplified I-Restrict for the I-Bag in figure 7 is shown in figure 13 a. An alternative
graphical notation including more detailed restrictions is shown in figure 13 b. Here the
information or properties local to some entity type, in this case Person and Company, are
included in the box describing this entity type. Relationships among entity types are indicated
by arrows. The added restrictions are indicated in red. The asterisk is indicating that „ssno‟
can be used as a unique reference to a Person. (In the general case a combination of properties
and/or relationships is needed to form such a reference.) This I-Restrict requires a Company
to have at least 3 and at most 30 board members while a Person may act as a board member in
0 or more (M) Companies. And so forth.
Person
<state name> <name>
* ssno: <ssno> 1:1
state last name state: <state name> 1:1
last name: <name> 1:1
<ssno> ssno Person interest <text> interest: <text> 0:M
board board member 3:30 (0:M)
employer
member
employer 1:M (1:M)
Company
location association
<city> Company
<text>
company name
* company name: <text> 1:1
association: <text> 0:1
<text> location: <city> 1:1
Figure 13 a Figure 13 b
Interestingly enough, I-Restrict is structured and expressed exactly the same way other types
of information are, i.e. using I-Bits forming an I-Bag. Consequently all the operations
applicable to “ordinary” information are also applicable to I-Restrict information. This is very
important as it brings a lot of power to I-Work for free. The advantage for the user is obvious.
Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level - Overview 12
3.3.2 The movie star application continues
Back to the buddies. The group decides that an I-Restrict would help manage, use and explain
the information in the common I-Bag. Risk for inconsistencies are thereby avoided. Opinions
are excluded from the common I-Bag as they are considered more of a private nature. This
information stays as private on each phone. Also, other information of specific interest only to
one person is up to that person to work with on the private phone.
As D had promised to take on the major burden of keeping the I-Bag up to date the others
took the opportunity to suggest the inclusion of awards received from Academy Awards
(Oscar), Golden Globes and others into the I-Bag. D accepts the proposal – this time – just
reflecting that the job as administrator for the foreseeable future probably will mean dealing
with an endless stream of suggestions for extensions and modifications from the other buddies.
Anyway, figure 14 shows the current I-Restrict including award information.
<text>
organization
<text>
award type
<state/country>
Celebration at Award
born in <country>
when for
Role
lives in
<year> performed by
my opinion <Actor name>
as in
<text>
<text>
<Movie name> directed by
my review
<text>
<city>
title
official website premiere <text>
good website <year>
<web address>
<web address>
Figure 14
An extract of just one documented award is shown in figure 15 a. Figure 15 b is the same
information but including explanation for each concept for those who ask for it service.
at
<Celebration> at <Award>
when award type
for award type
organization when for
2001
Best actor organization
Best actor
2001 <Role>
Academy Award®
Academy Award®
as
as
performed by in movie performed by in movie
Maximus
Maximus
Russell Crowe Gladiator Russell Crowe Gladiator
Figure 15 a Figure 15 b
Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level - Overview 13
Figure 16 shows the alternative more compact representation of the I-Restrict.
Award
* award type: <text> 1:1
for 1:1 (0:M)
* at 1:1 (1:M) Role
* name: <text> 1:1
as: <text> 1:1
my opinion: <text> 0:1
Celebration
* organization: <text> 1:1 performed by 1:1 (1:M)
when: <year> 0:1
* in 1:1 (1:M)
<Actor name>
<Movie name> born in: <state/country> 0:1
lives in: <country> 0:1
premiere: <year> 0:1
directed by: <text> 1:1
official website <web address> 0:1
good website <web address> 0:M
my review <text> 0:M
Figure 16
As it turns out, once a month the private opinions from each phone are loaded into a monthly
I-Bag to give each buddy a possibility to check those opinions others have expressed about
the same thing. They later on agree on a formal scale for entering opinions to allow for more
subtle comparisons.
Sometimes a person would like to act on and retrieve information from the union of the
private and shared information. No problem. The shared I-Bag on the server is just
downloaded to the private phone and automatically integrated in the I-Bag at that phone for
the operations of interest.
The shared I-Bag already contains a lot of different types of information to navigate. The
semantics is clearly defined, interpretation no problem. However, this is certainly just the
beginning. The users will be demanding more and more, as the usefulness of the application is
be further appreciated. Perhaps at some point the I-Bag is split into two or more separate,
more specialized I-Bags?
And so forth. The possibilities are endless.
Over to the operations available.
3.4 I-Do
In I-Work an I-Bag may be operated on via I-Do, consisting of several interface languages
that take advantage of the capabilities I-Modelling has to offer. In a mobile phone the I-Graph
and I-Modelgraph interfaces are supposed to be the common choices. The other interfaces
will play more important roles in more advanced applications. See chapter 5 (Bringing it all
together) below.
Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level - Overview 14
I-Do
Do-Graph
Do-Restrictgraph
Do-Query
Do-Programming
Figure 17
3.4.1 Do-Graph
This interface allows the user to enter new I-Bits graphically, to update existing I-Bits, and to
retrieve a set of I-Bits based on some search criteria. Intelligent support for both text and
graphic work are necessary features. A few examples are given below.
3.4.1.1 Entering I-Bits.
Entering one I-Bit is in its basic form made like in figure 1 above. Several I-Bits of the same
kind, e.g. all the interests of the same person, may be done according to figure 18.
Snowboarding
Smith likes
Sailing
Figure 18
Similarly to enter the fact that Jones and Anderson both live in Nevada might be done as in
figure 19.
Jones
lives in Nevada
Anderson
Figure 19
Text is just one available format. Depending on user preference figure 8 could alternately be
expressed according to figure 20.
likes
Figure 20
Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level - Overview 15
Why not even some graphical symbol for „likes‟?
Entering I-Bits might be performed from “scratch” like the given examples. It can also be
performed from an already existing I-Graph retrieved in some earlier step. In this case
dragging and dropping might come into use.
3.4.1.2 Retrieving I-Bits
Retrievals are performed by I-Patterns similar to the simple I-Bit graph in figure 5 above but
exchanging some of the explicit entries with „?‟ and/or „*‟. The I-Pattern in figure 21 a will as
a result get figure 21 b.
Jones lives in ? Jones lives in Nevada
Figure 21 a Figure 21 b
Figure 22 will get figure 18 above or perhaps figure 20 if photos were entered.
Smith likes ?
Figure 22
Figure 23 will get figure 19 above.
? lives in Nevada
Figure 23
If everything about „Jones‟ is of interest figure 23 should be used resulting in figure 24.
Jones ? ?
Figure 24
Solid
Construction Inc
Nevada
works for
lives in Opera
likes
222-33-4444 has ssno Jones
likes
Travel
works for
Fast
Painters Inc
Figure 25
Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level - Overview 16
3.4.1.3 Retrieving I-Bit Components
Now, suppose a friend has sent you an I-Bag without telling you about the content. No
problem! Putting question marks at all three places will get you everything. However, this
might not be what you want. Furthermore, the resulting graph will probably be useless being
much larger than the display. Another approach would be to start by retrieving the types of
relationships in the I-Bag. Instead of a number of I-Bits we want a list of the relationship
types being used. Now the asterisk comes into action. An asterisk means a component of no
interest that may take „any value‟. Figure 26 a applied to figure 6 above gives the list of
interest, figure 26 b.
has board member
has location in
has ssno
* is member of *
likes
lives in
* ? * works for
Figure 26 a Figure 26 b
Maybe ‟has ssno‟ can be interpretated as an indication that the first component represent
names of persons. We would perhaps want to check out which those persons are without any
interest so far in their social security numbers. Drag „has ssno‟ to the I-Pattern as shown in
figure 27 a and the result in figure 27 b will come up.
Smith
Jones has ssno *
? has ssno * Clark
Figure 27 a Figure 27 b
Similarly, we might be interested in what „lives in‟ stands for. Is the reference to a country, a
city, a state, a type of residence, ….? Let‟s check it out by figure 28 a. Figure 28 b is the
answer.
Nevada
* lives in Idaho
* lives in ? Oregon
Figure 28 a Figure 28 b
The I-Patterns given above are just some examples of those available. More sophisticated
conditions could for instance be used. For instance, we might be interested in all persons
living in any state except Nevada. The I-Pattern is given in figure 29.
Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level - Overview 17
? lives in - Nevada
Figure 29
3.4.1.4 Deleting I-Bits
Two choices exist. One alternative is to use I-Patterns possibly including asterisks. Start by
indicating the deletion mode. Then fill in the I-Pattern to be deleted. A few examples are
given below. Suppose Smith is no longer interested in Sailing. Figure 30 takes care of this.
Smith likes Sailing
Figure 30
Now, suppose Smith is of no interest whatsoever. Figure 31 is then to be used.
Smith likes *
Figure 31
Finally delete all „lives in‟ I-Bits except for those living in Nevada.
* lives in - Nevada
Figure 32
The other alternative is to delete from an already exposed I-Graph, retrieved by some I-
Pattern. Just click on those I-Bits that are to be deleted.
3.4.1.5 Changing I-Bits
Change operations also come in two alternatives similar to those of deletion. Start by
activating the change mode. The most common way is probably to make the changes on an
already exposed I-Graph, retrieved by some I-Pattern. Just change the components of interest.
If the component is some text that should be corrected, usual word processing is performed. If
a component should be replaced by some other, e.g. a picture replaced by some other picture,
bring the new picture from wherever it might exist into the active <working desk> and drag it
over the picture to be replaced.
The other possibility is to formulate the changes to be made by an I-Pattern and the changes to
be made. The I-Pattern is used to point out those I-Bits to be changed. Changes can then be
expressed for the explicit components. Suppose that „Nevada‟ should be changed to “The
Silver State” wherever it exist in I-Bits where the relationship is „lives in‟.
Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level - Overview 18
* lives in Nevada
>>
The Silver State
Figure 33
If a map of Nevada is preferred instead of „The Silver State‟, just bring in the map and put it
there instead.
Other more advanced changes to text can also be expressed by specific text syntax.
3.4.2 Do-Restrictgraph
The I-Graph alternative is mainly to be used with I-Bags having no I-Restrict attached. The
Do-Restrictgraph interface on the other hand is based on the existence of an I-Restrict
connected to the I-Bag. By giving a full overview of the types of content in the I-Bag the I-
Restrict opens up more powerful options for retrievals. They can be expressed directly via the
I-Restrict graph. Furthermore, this overview allows for more complex queries to be expressed.
As indicated in figure 17 above, I-Do includes a complete powerful query language I-Query.
The I-Query syntax is text based allowing for complex queries to be expressed. Outputs are
either in the form of a stream of I-Bits, an I-Bag or a table of retrieved values. Do-
Restrictgraph is in many ways a graphical version of I-Query. However, some expressions are
hard to represent graphically. Among those are conditions whose interpretation is dependent
on the ordering in the text. Graphics based expressions have more limited ways to represent
ordering. More work is needed in this area of I-Do to make Do-Restrictgraph as transparent as
possible to I-Query within the practical limits graphs have to offer. I-Query is formally
defined in a separate paper. The following examples are just included to give a flavour of the
capacities of Do-Restrictgraph. The first example uses the I-Restrict from figure 12 above.
<state name>
lives in
<ssno> has ssno Smith likes <text>
has board works for
member
?
has location in is member of
<city> <text>
Figure 34
The query can be read as “For the person named Smith, retrieve the sso, state and interest as
well as the name and location of the company where he is employed”. The red oval indicates
the start of the navigation through the graph. The grey properties and relationships indicate
what is of interest. When it comes to relationships it has to be indicated if the entity pointed at
Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level - Overview 19
is of interest or not, given explicit entity values. In this case the company name was of interest.
Changing the question mark to an asterisk means only the location of the employer is of
interest. The output comes in the form defined by the user. If no preference is given the output
will come as a graph like figure 35.
Idaho
Snowboarding
lives in
likes
111-22-3333 Sailing
has ssno Smith
works for
Solid has
Construction Inc location in Smalltown
Figure 35
The preconditions are slightly different when it comes to I-Restricts like the ones in figure 13
above. Entities are always implicit by which the just given choice for „?‟ or „*‟ has no
relevance. On the other hand, the start is always with property values (or a combination of
property values) for the entities of interest. The exact same query would be stated as in figure
36.
<state name> Smith
state last name
<ssno> ssno Person interest <text>
board employer
member
Company
location association
<city>
<text>
company name
<text>
Figure 36
Navigation backwards over a relationship or property is indicated by black.
The output would look like figure 37.
Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level - Overview 20
Smith
Idaho
last name
state Snowboarding
interest
111-22-3333
ssno
Sailing
employer
location
Smalltown
company name
Solid
Construction Inc
Figure 37
The compact I-Restrict format is well suited when implicit entity identification is being used.
The query would look like figure 38 a and the answer like figure 38 b.
Person Person
ssno: ? ssno: 111-22-3333
state: ? state: Idaho
last name: Smith last name: Smith
interest: ? interest: Snowboarding
Sailing
board member
employer employer
Company
Company
company name: ?
association: company name: Solid Construction Inc
location: ? location: Smalltown
Figure 38 a Figure 38 b
An entity type might in the general case have a long list of properties. A question mark
instead of the entity type name indicates that everything about that entity type is of interest,
thereby avoiding question mark on each property. If some property of interest is missing, this
is indicated by „< >‟.
A last query: “For each company, get its name and for all its employees the ssno, name and
state for each of them”. The same query using Do-Restrictgraph would look like in figure 39.
Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level - Overview 21
<state name> <name>
state last name
<ssno> ssno Person interest <text>
board employer
member
*
location association
<city>
<text>
company name
<text>
Figure 39
The red oval with an asterisk means “For all companies …..”. „Employer‟ is black to indicate
backward navigation. The answer is shown in figure 40.
Idaho Smith
state last name
111-22-3333
ssno
Solid
Construction Inc
employer
company name
Nevada
state employer
222-33-4444
ssno last name Jones
employer
Fast Painters Inc
company name
Figure 40
Once again, the same query and answer using the compact format are shown in figures 41 a
and 41 b.
Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level - Overview 22
Person
ssno: ?
state: ?
last name: ?
interest:
Person Person
ssno: 111-22-3333 ssno: 222-33-4444
board member state: Idaho state: Nevada
last name: Smith last name: Jones
employer
employer employer employer
*
company name: ? Company Company
association:
company name: Solid Construction Inc company name: Fast Painters Inc
location:
Figure 41 a Figure 41 b
Why differentiate between grey and black? Try to express this: “For each Nevada resident get
her or his name and ssno as well as the name and list of board members of each of employer.”
Now try to express this: “For each Nevada resident get her or his name and ssno as well as the
name of the companies where she of he is a board member together with the employees of
each of those companies.”
They will be exactly the same unless the different colours are included.
Note that the given examples only show a few of the capabilities of the graphical language.
3.5 I-Management
I-Bags may be temporary or permanent. Temporary I-Bags come from retrievals. They may
be active during a session by putting them in temporary session storage. If this storage is not
used the next retrieval will replace the former retrieval.
Permanent I-Bags are stored in folders the same way files are stored.
I-Bags, may be combined to form larger I-Bags. This may involve temporary as well as
permanent I-Bags. This new I-Bag may be used as a temporary I-Bag for some interesting
retrievals or stored as a new permanent I-Bag. Combining several I-Bags should be performed
in such a way that semantic inconsistencies are avoided. From a technical standpoint
combining several I-Bags is an easy task. Just bring the total number of I-Bits together.
Different rules can be expressed for the integration process so that the resulting I-Bag gets the
desired content. One such rule could be to only accept I-Bits about entities from I-Bag B if
those entities don‟t already exist in I-Bag A. I-Bags might have open relationships allowing
the content in other I-Bags to be attached seamlessly when they are brought together.
See chapter 4 in “Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level – Usage Examples” for a
possible use case.
Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level - Overview 23
Splitting up I-Bags is performed by some I-Do interface retrieving a temporary I-Bag. Added
to this retrieval is a directive that the retrieved I-Bits should also be deleted from the I-Bag
acted upon. If only parts of the retrieved I-Bits should be deleted the operation has to be split
up in two steps, one for the retrieval and one for the deletion.
I-Management comprises a broad set of services either for the end user to use or intended for
those managing of the application.
3.6 I-Reach
Temporary as well as permanent I-Bags may be used privately or shared with others. Sharing
is performed easily by using the facilities in I-Reach. The I-Bits to be shared is either sent as
an I-Bag in its own right or sent as a sequential stream of I-Bits, all depending on the
requester‟s intended use of the information.
Suppose A has documented information about a number of books including different kinds of
reviews and want to share that information with B, both acting according to I-Work. I-Reach
comes into work. Two choices exist.
The easiest way is to send the information as a separate I-Bag. Nothing extra at all needs to be
performed by B upon retrieval other than possibly putting the incoming I-Bag in the right
place. B can directly start working on it by using one of the available I-Dos. If B wants to
integrate this delivery with an own I-Bag this can be done by a management operation (see
section 3.5 above).
Figure 42
If on the other hand B wants to work on the I-Bits on retrieval, perhaps to pick just some of
them for update in B‟s own similar book information storage rather than working directly on
A‟s information, the sequential stream is probably the most convenient. This is also the
natural choice if A and B are structuring their information fully or partly different. The
updates can be performed using one of the I-Dos. If B has special requirements for the
updates to take place probably some programming might be necessary using some
programming language in combination with the Programming Interface Do-Programming.
Figure 43
Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level - Overview 24
More about this latter type of I-Bag exchange is found in a separate report “Bringing mobile
phone applications to a new level – Exchange Format”. The report also explains why this
approach is superior to XML and others.
If the information delivered is not expected to be known by the receiver the I-Restrict should
be included in the delivery as well. This is simple matter as the I-Restrict is also expressed as
an I-Bag of I-Bits.
Exchange can be performed over Internet using any Internet capable equipment having I-
Work installed. It is also anticipated that direct communication similar to sending SMS
messages will become an option.
4 Usage examples
See the separate paper “Bringing mobile phone applications to a new level – Usage
Examples”.
5 Bringing it all together
So far the normal user has been some person working with private information or exchanging
information with other persons using a mobile phone, a laptop or something similar at hand.
The same approach can be used for exchanging information on a more professional scale. In
fact the information management part of a SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) environment
comes for free. The main difference to the current Web Services Architecture (WSA) in this
respect lays in the way information is structured and exchanged and in the capacities to link
all types of equipment together using the easiest possible standards. WSA is depending on
XML while our solution is based on a Binary Model. The latter gives flexibility, modelling
power and ease of use XML is unable to match. Furthermore, the Binary Model naturally
allows users to read, work with, and exchange the information exactly the same way it is
interpreted and managed by I-Work. All without almost any syntax or learning curve involved.
XML is certainly not readable even if it was the initial intention. Also, in I-Work information
and model information are expressed exactly the same way opening up for advanced
information exposure and interchange applications.
The report “A Conceptual Model Driven Semantic Web - an Integrated Binary Approach”
(can be downloaded from www.skriver.nu/esociety) gives an introduction to how the proposal
presented in this paper easily can be applied to more professional environments. (The paper
uses a somewhat different vocabulary but this should hopefully not cause the reader any
problem.)
Bringing it all together and we have a completely integrated information management
environment from the smallest mobile phone to the largest computer, from the simplest
personal usage to the most sophisticated integrated application involving large corporations in
cooperation.
