Visual programming of location-based services

Abstract

In this paper we discuss a visual programming environment for design and rapid prototyping of web-based applications, securely connected to remote Location-Based Services. The visual programming approach of this research is based on computation as data transformation within a dataflow, and on visual composition of web services. The VisPro environment uses a very simple approach to service composition: (a) the developer takes a set of web widgets from a library, (b) builds interactively a user interface by drag and drop, (c) builds the application logic of the web service by drawing the connections between boxes (standing for suitable data transformations) and widgets (standing for user interaction). The development session produces, in presentation mode, a web page where the user may trigger, and interact with, the novel data mining and related computation. A successful GUI (and logic) is abstracted as a new service, characterized by a new widget, and stored in the widget library. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.