Generating User Interfaces From Conceptual Models: A Model-Transformation Based Approach

Traditionally, the Software Engineering community has been interested in defining methods and processes to develop software by specifying its data and behavior disregarding user interaction. On the other hand, the Human-Computer Interaction community has defined techniques oriented to the modeling of the interaction between the user and the system, proposing a user-oriented software construction. This paper aspires to reconcile both visions by integrating them in a whole software production process. An approach based on conceptual-schema centric software development is presented, where conceptual primitives intended to specify static, dynamic and interaction aspects are properly provided. Furthermore, Model Transformation techniques are proposed to go from the problem space, represented by the Conceptual Schema, to the solution space, represented by the corresponding final software product. This proposal is underpinned by some current MDA-based technology, which makes user-oriented, model-based software generation a reality

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