Model driven architecture as an approach for modeling and generating graphical user interface

Abstract

Integrating the modeling process throughout all development phases of any application is promising. On the one hand, this is the basis of Model Driven Architecture approach (MDA) which advocates the massive use of models during different steps of any application’s development. On the other hand, the achievement of the User Interface (UI) of an application as Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is among the key factors of its success. Along with that, we present the approach we adopted to demonstrate the tandem of the MDA and HCI communities. Based on the MDA approach and its principles, we first elaborate the Platform Independent Model (PIM) which is actually our way to describe the interface’s functionalities and not using just a simple Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagram. Second, we established the Platform Specific Model (PSM) for Swing to describe UI. Then, we focused on implementing mapping rules between the two models and also the code generation. Finally, with this method, graphical interfaces can easily be analyzed designed and generated to increase the productivity of the system.