An approach to the specification of user interface templates for business applications

Abstract

Through a number of research projects we propose a form-driven approach to business application generation. Our IIS*Studio development environment (IIS*Studio DE, current version 7.1) is aimed to support the form-driven approach and provides the information system (IS) design and generating executable business application prototypes. An executable business application specification, generated by means of IIS*Studio, may be visually interpreted in different ways. In the paper we present the extension of the IIS*Studio repository containing the common model of user interface (UI). The IIS*UIModeler is an integrated part of the IIS*Studio development environment, aimed at modelling UI templates. Applying it, a designer specifies UI templates. UI template specification contains attribute values that describe common UI characteristics, such as: screen size, main application window position, background/foreground colour, etc. UI template specifications are independent from any specific IS project specification, generated by means of IIS*Studio tool. The same UI template may be used for the business application prototype generation of different ISs. Also, the same IS project specification may be visually interpreted in different ways by means of different UI templates. The specification of a UI template may be seen as a fully platform independent UI model. Besides the detail description of UI template common model, we illustrate the main features of the IIS* UIModeler tool.