This is an introductory tutorial to the use of HyperDE. It is not meant as a tutorial on SHDM and its details.

The first step is to open a command window in the directory where HyperDE is installed, and type "r script\server".

If you have set up the configurations files properly, with the sample database (see HowToInstall and BasicSesameConfiguration), you should get a screen like this:

Open your web browser at the url  http://localhost:3000/navigation, and this screen appears:

Notice the bar at the top. It gives you access to the "meta-environment", i.e., an environment where you can change the application's model, as well as conveniently enter or modify instances of your data. More on this later...

First, let's browse a little bit through the application, so you get a feel for it. Later, we will go into detail on how it was generated.

Try clicking on "Hypermedia", and the following screen appears:

Experiment with passing the cursor over the various fields and anchors in this screen.

Next, click on "Daniel Schwabe", to get this screen:

Try changing the email in the form, and watch closely the highlighted field in the screen. Notice that it changes to the new value you typed in the form field, but the screen did not refresh - AJAX in action!

For example

Now click again on "Daniel Schwabe", to see this screen.

This is the same node that you saw previously, but in a different context (notice the context name at the top, and on the left column in the earlier screen). Besides the layout, this view of Professor allows changing the email, and also present another property which was not shown earlier: Students in Area (highlighted).

This property has the following definition: "A list of all Students advised by Professors that work in the same ResearchArea? as the current Professor". We will see later how this can be easily computed using the generated DSL!