Many techniques exist for analyzing information domains in preparation for systems design. No systematic technique exists, however, for analyzing a system or domain in terms of its relationships. This is especially important for hypermedia and World Wide Web applications, which (should) provide a high degree of linking and navigational support. RNA (Relationship Navigation Analysis) provides a systematic way of identifying useful relationships in application domains. Developers can then implement each relationship as a link. Viewing an application domain from the relationship management point of view and modeling from a philosophy of maximum access provides a unique vantage point for application design. We present RNA and its generic relationship taxonomy, focusing upon their use for system analysis. We provide a long example in the domain of an on-line bookstore.

Few designers explicitly think about their applications' interrelationships. Designers appear not have a deep enough conceptualization of their domains to identify intuitive relationships and realize the full scope and interconnections within domains. RNA (Relationship-Navigation Analysis) gives designers and developers an analysis tool to think about an information domain in terms of its interrelationships. RNA incorporates a complete taxonomy of generic relationship types that would apply to any application domain.

V.B a l a s u b r a m a n i a Bang Min MaJoonhee Voo I n this .sidebar, we denionstrate the .systematic design pr inciples and methodologies advocated by many of this special section's authors for a Wor Id-Wide Web (WWW) application. We used these approaches to reimplement AC.M SKII,INK'S I.INKBase", containing abstracts from conferences and other hypermedia-related "events." We followed the seven steps of the Relationship Management (RM) methodology [?>]. In the irrst step, entity-relationship design, we identified five entities (Organization, Event, Eventjtem, Person, and Publication) and eight relationships among them. The second step, entity design, involved slicing;m entity's attributes into different (overlapping) subsets, with a head slice connected to the others by structtrr al links [2]. While the RM methodolog)' prescribes guidelines for .slicing a given entity, it does not di.scuss combining slices from different entities for presentation. We added the concept of a cross-entity slicf comhmmg elements from different entities to be pre.sented in a single window. For example, to display details about a confer ence event adequately, we included attributes from the Organization, Person, and Publication entities. We also added the concept of a minimttitt slice-the minimal .set of an entity's attributes to inclirde (as anchors) in slices from other entities. This concept is similar to identifying objects and groups of objects suggested by [1]. These anchors are the starting points of applicative or reference links, while anchors belonging to the same entity (for example, description in Figure 1) are the starting points of structural links [2]. Slicing helped us determine the ajjpropriate chunks of information to be displayed without fragmentation, tlitrs increa.sing local coherence [5]. The third step, navigation design, produced a Relationship V.

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