Generating Graphical User Interfaces Based on Model Driven Engineering

Abstract

In this article we present our approach developed concerning the generation of usable User Interfaces (UI), then we show its results, starting as a basis with UML models. Indeed, we based the approach on the Model Driven Engineering and the development of specific meta models for UI from the perspective of a UML model-based design on one hand and a set of transformations on the other hand. Indeed, we defined a new meta model that is neither a use case nor an activity diagram, but our way to describe the UI in terms of the user's interactions. Thus we used the good practices of Designs Patterns when developing the meta models. The approach includes first creating a platform independent model (PIM) and transforming this PIM into platform specific model (PSM) thought transformation rules. The PIM is created first based on the UML use case and activities diagrams to extract the main functionalities offered by the system to be developed. Then we established the PSM meta model, being the target model of our transformation engine, taking into account the design patterns composite and MVC. With this methodology, the UI can easily be analyzed, designed, and generated to increase system development