Despite the advances in software technology, there are still problems that need to be solved. They are related to understanding components, modifying them and their interfaces, etc., as well as to the practical use of ComponentBased Development (CBD) for large-scale applications.Our approach is based on developing multiple view components of multimedia types. These multiple views can be divided into a few groups to represent different features of a component: (1)
computational schemes of a corresponding component algorithm, (2) variables and formulas used in the algorithm, and (3) input/output (I/O) operations of the component. Such approach simplifies the understanding and manipulation of components. This paper discusses examples of visualizing I/O specifications which include the definition of data source and the corresponding target, scanning schemes applied to structures, conditions imposed upon different operations, etc.In other words, a visual language to define external intercomponent interfaces is presented.
This paper presents a visual approach that will make program comprehension easy. This visual approach employs "Cyber-Films" where a user can use them not only as a programming tool but also as a learning tool. This paper briefly describes how to use "Cyber-Films" as a programming tool, how to use them as a learning tool, and how to guarantee the absence (or at least minimize the presence) of syntax errors in programming. In order to verify that "Cyber-Films" are also useful as a learning tool, a prototype implementation was developed and an experiment was conducted. This paper presents and discusses the results of that experiment. Its goal was to evaluate whether or not the visual approach used was easy to understand even for users with no background at all. The results of that experiment showed that the majority of the respondents correctly identified each scheme of communication presented in "Cyber-Film" format by just observing the set of frames in animation either once or twice and at most thrice before understanding a given scheme. Because the respondents easily identified how a given scheme worked by observing it, this approach can also facilitate the understanding of programs written by other people.
A visual approach for specifying input/output (I/O) operations and watching them in different modes is presented. The discussion includes a brief overview of our system and an example of specifying I/O operations. In our approach, we allow a programmer to view a software component in any of the six different groups of views related to the different features of a component. Each group is supported by its own subsystem. One can make a part of a programming work in any of these subsystems. To make this work, each subsystem provides a few different modes. For example, the specification of I/O operations is just based on one of the subsystems and has three modes discussed in this paper. A special interface panel is provided for each mode and all specifications or programming will be done by mouse click operations only.
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