Model-Driven Development of Interactive Multimedia Applications

The development of highly interactive multimedia applications is still a challenging and complex task. In addition to the application logic, multimedia applications typically provide a sophisticated user interface with integrated media objects. As a consequence, the development process involves different experts for software design, user interface design, and media design. There is still a lack of concepts for a systematic development which integrates these aspects. This thesis provides a model-driven development approach addressing this problem. Therefore it introduces the Multimedia Modeling Language (MML), a visual modeling language supporting a design phase in multimedia application development. The language is oriented on well-established software engineering concepts, like UML 2, and integrates concepts from the areas of multimedia development and model-based user interface development. MML allows the generation of code skeletons from the models. Thereby, the core idea is to generate code skeletons which can be directly processed in multimedia authoring tools. In this way, the strengths of both are combined: Authoring tools are used to perform the creative development tasks while models are used to design the overall application structure and to enable a well-coordinated development process. This is demonstrated using the professional authoring tool Adobe Flash. MML is supported by modeling and code generation tools which have been used to validate the approach over several years in various student projects and teaching courses. Additional prototypes have been developed to demonstrate, e.g., the ability to generate code for different target platforms. Finally, it is discussed how models can contribute in general to a better integration of well-structured software development and creative visual design

From the Behavior Model of an Animated Visual Language to its Editing Environment Based on Graph Transformation

Animated visual models are a reasonable means for illustrating system behavior. However, implementing animated visual languages and their editing environments is difficult. Therefore, guidelines, specification methods, and tool support are necessary. A flexible approach for specifying model states and behavior is to use graphs and graph transformations. Thereby, a graph can also represent dynamic aspects of a model, like animations, and graph transformations are triggered over time to control the behavior, like starting, modifying, and stopping animations or adding and removing elements. These concepts had already been added to Dia-Meta, a framework for generating editing environments, but they provide only low-level support for specifying and implementing animated visual languages; specifying complex dynamic languages was still a challenging task. This paper proposes the Animation Modeling Language (AML), which allows to model behavior and animations on a higher level of abstraction. AML models are then translated into low-level specifications based on graph transformations. The approach is demonstrated using a traffic simulation

Correctness of model-based software composition (CMC). Proceedings. ECOOP 2003 Workshop #11 in association with the 17th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Darmstadt, Germany, July 22, 2003

This proceedings contains the contributions to the Workshop on Correctness of Model-based Software Composition, held in conjunction with the 17th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP), Darmstadt, Germany on July 22, 2003. While most events concentrate on realisations of composition on the technological level this workshop aims at closing the gap of ensuring the intended composition result supported by the usage of models. Two important problems in composition are first how to model the different assets (such as components, features or aspects) and second the composition of assets such that consistency and correctness is guaranteed. The first problem has been addressed in the Workshop on Model-based Software Reuse (ECOOP 2002). The latter problem occurs when dealing with, e.g., component interoperability, aspect weaving, feature interaction and (on a more abstract level) traceability between different views or models. One approach to deal with the composition problem is to use models allowing to model the composition. This allows checking the interoperability of the different assets to compose, the correctness of the configuration of assets and predicting properties of the assembled system (especially compliance with user requirements). In case of problem detection suitable resolution algorithms can be applied. 10 reviewed contributions give an overview about current research directions in correctness of model-based software compositions. Results from the discussions during the workshop may be found in the ECOOP 2003 workshop reader to be published by Springer LNCS. The web page of the workshop as well as the contributions of this proceedings may be found at URL: http://ssel.vub.ac.be/workshops/ECOOP2003/ Affiliated to previous ECOOP conferences a related workshop about feature interaction (ECOOP 2001) and an additional about model-based software reuse (ECOOP 2002) have been held. Their contributions are published as technical report No. 2001-14 and as technical report No. 2002-4, respectively, at the Universitaet Karlsruhe, Fakultaet fuer Informatik. URLs: http://www.info.uni-karlsruhe.de/~pulvermu/workshops/ecoop2001/ http://www.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/cgi-bin/psview?document=/ira/2001/14 http://www.info.uni-karlsruhe.de/~pulvermu/workshops/ECOOP2002/ http://www.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/cgi-bin/psview?document=/ira/2002/4 We would like to thank the program committee for their support as well as the authors and participants for their engaged contributions. The Workshop Organisers Ragnhild Van Der Straeten, Andreas Speck, Elke Pulvermueller, Matthias Clauss, Andreas Pleus

S2T2-Configurator: interactive support for configuration of large feature models

S2T2-Configurator is a visual tool for con guration of fea- ture models. In this tool paper, we focus on interactive techniques that support the con guration of large and complex models

The physical user interface profile (PUIP): modelling mobile interactions with the real world

So far the field of model based user interface development has focused mostly on the usage of one device, such as a Personal Computer, by one person. New interaction techniques emerge in which the user interacts with the surrounding world while using the mobile phone as a mediator for physical interactions and as communication tool to interact with services and other users. Here several devices or physical elements are used for input and output, and more than one user might be involved. These new settings require description models to support the analysis, design and implementation of systems that take such interaction techniques into account. We present the new UML 2.0 Physical User Interface Profile (PUIP) that is based on the UML 2.0 Profile for Context-Sensitive User Interface (CUP, [24]) to support the modelling of this kind of interactions. We show the feasibility of our approach through the modelling of an existing physical mobile interaction and discuss its suitability

Integrating automated product derivation and individual user interface design

Software Product Lines, in conjunction with modeldriven product derivation, are successful examples for extensive automation and reuse in software development. However, often each single product requires an individual, tailored user interface of its own to achieve the desired usability. Moreover, in some cases (e.g., online shops, games) it is even mandatory that each product has an individual, unique user interface of its own. Usually, this results in manual user interface design independent from the model-driven product derivation. Consequently, each product configuration has to be mapped manually to a corresponding user interface which can become a tedious and error-prone task for large and complex product lines. This paper addresses this problem by integrating concepts from SPL product derivation and Model-based User Interface Development. This facilitates both (1) a systematic and semi-automated creation of user interfaces during product derivation while (2) still supporting for individual, creative design