Software Architecture Modeling for User Interfaces

Abstract

Architectural modeling is becoming a central problem for large, complex systems. With the advent of new technologies and user-centered concerns, the user interface portion of interactive systems is becoming increasingly large and complex. This chapter is a reflection on software architecture modeling for interactive systems. In this domain, a number of architectural frameworks have emerged as canonical references. Although these models provide useful insights about how to partition and organize interactive systems, they do not always address important problems identified by main stream software architecture modeling. We first introduce the notion of software architecture and make explicit the steps and issues that architectural design involves and that most software designers tend to blend in a rather fuzzy way. Building on general concepts, a comparative analysis of the most significant refernce models developed for interactive systems is then presented: the Seeheim and Arch models followed by the more recent agent-based approaches that can be shaped to support multimodal interaction and groupware.

Evaluating User Interface Management Systems based on Quality Attributes and Unit Operations

“…The Slinky part of the model referred to the ability to expand and balance the allocation of functions to components. Slinky notion provides the ability for a given implementation architecture to place the dialogue, virtual application, and application in a separate or group them in a single structural components [4] [7].…”

“…The Controller defines the perceivable behavior of the agent for inputs. The overall means of interaction behavior with user is ideally achieved by the View and the Controller [4]. [9].…”

“…As an MVC, PAC is a type of agent-based models [4]. The main components of PAC are: the Presentation component which combines both input and output behavior [3], the Abstraction component which is considered as the functional core of the UIMS, and the Control component which expresses multiple forms of dependencies.…”

“…These defined unit operations are: Separation, Abstraction, Uniform Decomposition, Resource Sharing, Replication, and Compression. Many UIMSs architectural styles have been described in the literature (see for example [2] [3] [4]). The relationships of UIMSs architectural styles, unit operation and quality attributes are discussed in [5].…”

Placid

“…Un système interactif comprend un noyau fonctionnel (FC pour Functional Core) et une partie Interface HommeMachine (IHM) [5]. De la même manière, une distinction peutêtre effectuée entre service fonctionnel et IHM [20].…”