A visual environment for the manipulation and integration of JAVA Beans

Abstract

Motivation: Visual programming has the potential to allow non-programmers to redesign and rebuild applications to suit their individual needs. We have built such a visual programming environment, which allows non-programmers to interrogate and combine software components graphically to form new applications. As the needs of the biological community grow, so too will the need for more powerful and easy to use software tools. Intelligent visual programming environments will allow users to design and develop applications easily, so that they can concentrate on the application they wish to build rather than how it is to be done. Results: The environment can read in JAVA Beans, and present relevant information about the beans to the user. The user can then graphically specify how they would like information to flow between the beans by performing simple docking operations. Unnecessary complexities associated with such visual design have been removed by providing intelligent docking of components and visual feedback. With such mechanisms, the complexities of building new applications are reduced. When the biologist has finished the visual construction, the design system is able to generate the new application automatically. The system has been designed specifically to meet the needs of the biological community, and a range of 'BioBeans' are being developed. These include beans for visualization (sequence displays and data visualizers), analysis (feature recognition, error detection) and communication (database access, URL retrieval, DDE communication). Availability: Freely available.