The general problem of application development of interactive GUI applications
has been addressed by toolkits, libraries, user interface management systems, and more
recently domain-specific application frameworks. However, the most sophisticated
solution offered by frameworks still lacks a number of features which are addressed by
this research:
1) limited functionality -- the framework does little to help the developer
implement the application's functionality.
2) weak model of the application -- the framework does not incorporate a
strong model of the overall architecture of the application program.
3) representation of control sequences is difficult to understand, edit, and
reuse -- higher-level, direct-manipulation tools are needed.
We address these problems with a new framework design called Oregon
Speedcode Universe version 3.0 (OSU v3.0) which is shown, by demonstration, to
overcome the limitations above:
1) functionality is provided by a rich set of built-in functions organized as a
class hierarchy,
2) a strong model is provided by OSU v3.0 in the form of a modified MVC
paradigm, and a Petri net based sequencing language which together form
the architectural structure of all applications produced by OSU v3.0.
3) representation of control sequences is easily constructed within OSU v3.0
using a Petri net editor, and other direct manipulation tools built on top of
the framework.
In ddition:
1) applications developed in OSU v3.0 are partially portable because the
framework can be moved to another platform, and applications are
dependent on the class hierarchy of OSU v3.0 rather than the operating
system of a particular platform,
2) the functionality of OSU v3.0 is extendable through addition of classes,
subclassing, and overriding of existing methods.
The main contribution of this research is in the design of an application
framework that uses Petri nets as the computational model of data processing in the
synthesized application. OSU v3.0 is the first framework to formalize sequencing, and
to show that complex GUI applications can indeed be quickly and reliably produced
from such a framework. / Graduation date: 1992
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/36330 |
| Date | 29 July 1991 |
| Creators | Keh, Huan-chao |
| Contributors | Lewis, Ted G. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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