Authors:
David Raneburger
;
Roman Popp
and
Hermann Kaindl
Affiliation:
Institute of Computer Technology and Vienna Universtity of Technology, Austria
Keyword(s):
Platform-specific Model, Transformation Rules, Rule Design, GUI Generation, Optimization.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Model Transformation
;
Models
;
Paradigm Trends
;
Software Engineering
Abstract:
Software design and implementation, in general, have to take many alternatives into account for decision
making. Still, current approaches to Model-driven Architecture (MDA) typically transform in one and only
one thread from Platform-independent Models (PIMs) to Platform-specific Models (PSMs). Also in the special
case of automatically generating graphical user interfaces (GUIs) according to MDA, in most approaches one
thread derives a Final User Interface Model from some higher-level model(s). We think that this is one reason
for less than optimal usability of automatically generated GUIs.
Our transformation approach (as implemented for GUI generation) allows exploring different design alternatives
and evaluating the resulting PSMs according to given optimization objectives. Such a search approach
leads to optimal PSMs according to these objectives. In this way, resulting GUIs can be tailored for different
devices such as tablet PCs and smartphones. In this context, we design trans
formation rules for optimizing
PSMs independently from concrete device properties, which are given in separate device specifications (Platform
Models). We present a related case study for multi-device GUI generation and show that this approach
facilitates the automated optimization of PSMs for several devices.
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