CIAT-GUI: A MDE-compliant environment for developing Graphical User Interfaces of information systems

The development and specification of interactive systems is a complex process. The use of notations, methods and their respective technological support is necessary for obtaining user interfaces in a purely engineering manner and not in a manner of craftsmanship, as has been the case thus far. In the field of Software Engineering, an interest is currently being taken in the Model-Driven Development (MDD) paradigm. MDD permits simplification and automation in the process of software development by defining models and transformations of those models. This paradigm can be successfully applied to the problem of obtaining Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) from declarative models (Model-Based User Interface Development; MBUID). With the aim of solving the issue of obtaining a GUI by following a model-driven process, we propose a method, and a tool that implements that method called CIAT-GUI. In developing this tool we have made use of relevant technologies in the field of MDD such as EMF, GMF, ATL and MofScript. This proposed method, in contrast to other proposals existing in the literature, allows the visualization and modification of intermediate prototypes of the GUI and permits an executable GUI (in XAML language) to be obtained. Finally, an initial study was conducted with the aim of verifying the suitability of this approach and of the implemented tool, as well as assessing the perception of software engineers regarding its usefulness.

► The development and specification of interactive systems is a complex process. ► The principles of MDE can be successfully applied to the problem of obtaining user interfaces from declarative models. ► We propose a method and a MDE-compliant tool called CIAT-GUI. ► An initial study was conducted for validating the method, the tool and the obtained GUI. ► Results in this study show that our proposal can facilitate GUI design.