Application integration: Constructing composite applications from interactive components

Creating new applications by integrating user interface and application components is a relatively new idea which is currently of wide interest. A significant part of this problem is clearly defining the separation between user interface and application components. This paper proposes a new design methodology based on the concept of an abstract data view (ADV), a structuring method which cleanly defines this separation. A number of examples of composite interactive documents, ones which could contain several different user interfaces with entities such as text, calculations, drawings and possibly even multi‐media presentations, illustrate the ADV concept. These examples lead naturally to the introduction of the concept of hole, a user interface area in a composite interactive document which is managed by an external program, and uses ADVs. Prototypes of a number of systems supporting ADVs and holes are currently running in our laboratory.