Proteus Data Sheets
The PPIS
1. Introduction
The PPIS is a flexible information management system. The PPIS is intended to support the
collection and structuring of information which cannot be collected easily using conventional
CASE tools. Adaptable graphical and textual notations are provided as well as hypertext-like
links, the ability to reference external documents and facilities to call programs (word
processors, design editors, etc.) which can manipulate these documents.
The PPIS is designed to allow information stored in it to be created and reorganised flexibly
and easily. Entities may be moved across window boundaries by direct manipulation, groups
of entities converted into a sub-model and the text of annotations converted into entities and
vice-versa. Information from external files can be referenced. Text can be cut and pasted from
other applications running on the platform.
2. Technical Details
The principal features of the PPIS are:
- Representation of entity/link type models.
- Hierarchical decomposition of models.
- Attachment of structured and unstructured annotations to entities and links.
- Automatic support for decision matrices.
- Hypertext links between entities in different models.
- Typing of entities, links and annotations.
- User-defined type definition.
- Pre-defined type libraries
- Searching models for particular characteristics and generating reports about these
characteristics.
- Linking with information produced by other systems such as CASE tools.
- Fast, easy to learn user interface.
In the Proteus project, the principal use of the PPIS has been as a tool to capture and maintain
decision rationale. Decision rationale records the reason why one alternative was chosen in
preference to another. It is being increasingly recognised as an important technique to capture
valuable organisational knowledge for future reuse. We have developed a generic decision
template which users fill in to capture alternatives and arguments for and against these
alternatives.
The PPIS has also been used as a general-purpose meta-CASE tool to develop prototype CASE
toolsets for a variety of different methods. It is easy to define entity and relation types and their
representations.
Because of its easy-to-use interface and facilities for managing unstructured information, it is
extensively used as an idea processor. It is also a valuable tool for organising and presenting
large volumes of notes collected during surveys and studies of work.