Generating user interface code in a model based user interface development environment (original) (raw)

Retrospective and challenges for model-based interface development

1996

Abstract Research on model-based user interface development tools is about 10 years old. Many approaches and prototype systems have been investigated in universities and research laboratories around the world. This paper proposes a generic architecture for these tools, reviews the different approaches in light of this architecture, and discusses their progress towards the goals of increasing the quality and reducing the cost of developing interfaces.

Languages for model-driven development of user interfaces: Review of the state of the art

Yugoslav Journal of Operations Research, 2013

In model-driven user interface development, several models are used to describe different aspects of user interface when level of detail varies. The relations between the models are established through model transformations. The Model Driven Engineering (MDE) approach has been proposed in software engineering domain in order to provide techniques and tools to deal with models in the automated way. In this paper, we will review existing user interface languages that gain wider acceptance, and discuss their applicability for model-driven user interface development.

Evaluating user interface generation approaches: model-based versus model-driven development

Software & Systems Modeling, 2018

Advances in software design possibilities have led to a growing interest in the study of User Interfaces (UIs). Many Model-Based User Interface Development Environments (MB-UIDEs) have been proposed to deal with the generation of the UIs (semi) automatically by using models with different levels of abstraction. Often, this generation is limited to the UI-part of an application. However, achieving true model-driven development (MDD) requires the co-development of application and user interface and hence needs to go a step further. This paper analyzes a large set of existing MB-UIDEs and evaluates, from a critical perspective, to what extent they can be considered full MDD environments and adequately addressing the co-design of UI and application. A robust assessment framework is defined and applied for this purpose. Following the guidelines proposed by Kitchenham & Charters in 2007, we performed a systematic literature review. A total of 82 papers were examined. Based on these papers, an assessment framework containing 10 criteria with specific metrics to evaluate MB-UIDEs was defined and 29 different environments were evaluated following these criteria. The evaluation shows that, although a strong progress has being achieved over the last years, the existing environments do not yet fully exploit the benefits and potentialities of MDD, nor do they adequately integrate UI design with application logic design and generation. Further research needs to be done to support the model-driven development of user interfaces and the co-design of the underlying application. The difficulty of use of the existing MB-UIDEs, the lack of UI design flexibility, and the lack of complete and integrated development support, are the main research gaps that need to be addressed.

Past, Present, and Future of Model-Based User Interface Development

2011

Zusammenfassung Dieser Artikel gibt einen Überblick über die letzten 30 Jahre der Forschung im Bereich der modellbasierten Entwicklung von Benutzungsschnittstellen. Dazu wird zunächst die Geschichte aufgearbeitet, bevor wesentliche Konzepte und aktuelle Ansätze beschrieben werden. Der letzte Abschnitt zeigt aktuelle Herausforderungen auf und gibt Implikationen, wie diesen zukünftig begegnet werden kann.

Model-based automated generation of user interfaces

1994

User interface design and development for knowledgebased systems and most other types of applications is a resource-consuming activity. Thus, many attempts have been made to automate, to certain degrees, the construction of user interfaces. Current tools for automated design of user interfaces are able to generate the static layout of an interface from the application's data model using an intelligent program that applies design rules. These tools, however, are not capable of generating the dynamic behavior of the interface, which must be specified programmatically, and which constitutes most of the effort of interface construction. Mecano is a model-based userinterface development environment that uses a domain model to generate both the static layout and the dynamic behavior of an interface.

Towards method engineering of model-driven user interface development

2007

Model-driven user interface development environments and their associated methodologies have evolved over time to become more explicit, flexible, and reusable but they still lack to reach a level that allows tailoring a method to the reality of software development organizations and their projects. In order to address this shortcoming, method engineering provides strategies to define and tailor software engineering methods.

Assessing the Quality of User-interface Modeling Languages

Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, 2015

Model-Driven Development (MDD) is an approach that considers model as first citizen elements in the context of software development. Since there are so many modeling languages, there is a need to compare them and choose the best for each concrete situation. The selection of the most appropriate modeling language may influence the output's quality, whether it is only a set of models or software. This paper introduces ARENA, a framework that allows to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of modeling languages. Then we will apply ARENA to a specific subset of User-Interface Modeling Languages (namely UMLi, UsiXML, XIS and XIS-Mobile), taking into account some of their characteristics and the influence they have when models are generated.