An integrated data flow visual language and software development environment

The current generation of data flow based visual programming systems is all too often limited in application. It is our contention that data flow visual languages, to be more widely accepted for solving a broad range of problems, need to be more general in their syntax, semantics, translation schemes, computational model, execution methods and scheduling. These capabilities should be accompanied by a development environment that facilitates information processing extensions needed by the user to solve a wide range of application-specific problems. This paper addresses these issues by describing and critiquing the Khoros system implemented by the University of New Mexico, Khoros Group. The Khoros infrastructure consists of several layers of interacting subsystems. A user interface development system (UIDS) combines a high-level user interface specification with methods of software development that are embedded in a code generation tool set. The UIDS is used to create, install and maintain the fundamental operators for cantata, the visual programming language component of Khoros.