Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Separation of concerns for distributed cross-platform context-aware user interfaces

  • Published:
Cluster Computing Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Modern applications aim to provide attractive, efficient and adaptive user interfaces (UIs). The UI code developed in conventional design approaches brings numerous of difficulties exacerbating the development and maintenance efforts resulting in limited separation of concerns. The limitation comes from multiple cross-cuts of tangled concerns, e.g. data representation tangled with layout, security, business rules, localization, etc. This results in high information restatement, code duplication, and tedious maintenance. This paper introduces an approach that separates UI concerns bringing a single focal point for particular concern definitions improving readability and maintenance. The approach performs concern tangling at runtime through a weaver considering the contextual information influencing the result. This enables UI context-awareness, while significantly reduces the development and maintenance efforts. Furthermore, we apply this approach into a distributed environment, which allows us to construct the same UI on various platforms and devices involving a single concerns description streamed from the server.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. By business rules we understand all preconditions and post-conditions of processes and their operations identified in the business domain as well as all model constraints [7].

  2. We perceive both data validation and security as subsets of business rules.

  3. http://richfaces.jboss.org/

  4. http://www.aspectfaces.com/

  5. Source Lines Of Code

References

  1. Bernard, E., Peterson, S.: Jsr 303: Bean Validation. Bean Validation Expert Group, March (2009)

  2. Browne, P.: JBoss Drools Business Rules. Packt Publishing Ltd, Birmingham (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Bures, M.: Framework for assessment of web application automated testability. In: Proceedings of the 2015 Conference on research in adaptive and convergent systems, pp. 512–514. ACM, New York (2015)

  4. Bures, M.: Model for evaluation and cost estimations of the automated testing architecture. In: New Contributions in Information Systems and Technologies, pp. 781–787. Springer, Heidelberg (2015)

  5. Cemus, K.: Context-aware input validation in information systems. In: POSTER 2016—20th International Student Conference on Electrical Engineering (2016)

  6. Cemus, K., Cerny, T.: Aspect-driven design of information systems. In: SOFSEM 2014: Theory and Practice of Computer Science, LNCS 8327, pp. 174–186. Springer International Publishing Switzerland (2014)

  7. Cemus, K., Cerny, T., Donahoo, M.J.: Automated business rules transformation into a persistence layer. Proc. Comput. Sci. 62, 312–318 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Cemus, K., Cerny, T., Donahoo, M.J.: Evaluation of approaches to business rules maintenance in enterprise information systems. In: Proceedings of the 2015 Conference on Research in Adaptive and Convergent Systems, pp. 324–329. ACM (2015)

  9. Cerny, T., Cemus, K., Donahoo, M.J., Song, E.: Aspect-driven, data-reflective and context-aware user interfaces design. ACM SIGAPP Appl. Comput. Rev. 13(4), 53–66 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Cerny, T., Donahoo, M.J.: How to reduce costs of business logic maintenance. In: 2011 IEEE International Conference on Computer Science and Automation Engineering (CSAE), Vol. 1, pp. 77–82. IEEE, Piscataway (2011)

  11. Cerny, T., Donahoo, M.J.: On separation of platform-independent particles in user interfaces. Clust. Comput. 18(3), 1215–1228 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Cerny, T., Donahoo, M.J.: On energy impact of web user interface approaches. Clust. Comput. 19(4), 1853–1863 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Cerny, T., Donahoo, M.J., Song, E.: Towards effective adaptive user interfaces design. In: Proceedings of the 2013 Research in Applied Computation Symposium (RACS 2013) (2013)

  14. Cerny, T., Macik, M., Donahoo, M.J., Janousek, J.: On distributed concern delivery in user interface design. Comput. Sci. Inf. Syst. 12(2), 655–681 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Cerny, T., Matl, L., Cemus, K., Donahoo, M.J.: Evaluation of separated concerns in web-based delivery of user interfaces. In: Information Science and Applications, pp. 933–940. Springer, Berlin (2015)

  16. Chinnici, R., Shannon, B.: JSR 316: Java\(^{\rm TM}\) Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) Specification, v6 (2009)

  17. Choi, Y.K., Yang, J.S., Jeong, J.: Application framework for multi platform mobile application software development. In: 11th International Conference On Advanced Communication Technology, 2009. ICACT 2009, Vol. 1, pp. 208–213. IEEE, Piscataway (2009)

  18. Czarnecki, K., Eisenecker, U.W.: Generative programming. Edited by Goos, G., Hartmanis, J., van Leeuwen, J., p. 15 (2000)

  19. Fowler, M.: Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code. Pearson Education, New Delhi (2002)

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  20. Fowler, M.: Domain-Specific Languages. Pearson Education, New Delhi (2010)

  21. Kennard, R., Edmonds, E., Leaney, J.: Separation anxiety: stresses of developing a modern day separable user interface. In: 2009 HSI’09 2nd Conference on Human System Interactions, pp. 228–235. IEEE, Piscataway (2009)

  22. Kennard, R., Steele, R.: Application of software mining to automatic user interface generation (2008)

  23. Kiczales, G., Lamping, J., Mendhekar, A., Maeda, C., Lopes, C., Loingtier, J.M., Irwin, J.: Aspect-Oriented Programming. Springer, Berlin (1997)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  24. Kleppe, A.G., Warmer, J.B., Bast, W.: MDA Explained, the Model Driven Architecture: Practice and Promise. Addison-Wesley Professional, Boston (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Mernik, M., Heering, J., Sloane, A.M.: When and how to develop domain-specific languages. ACM Comput. Surv. (CSUR) 37(4), 316–344 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Morin, B., Barais, O., Jezequel, J.M., Fleurey, F., Solberg, A.: Models at runtime to support dynamic adaptation. Computer 42(10), 44–51 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Vanderdonckt, J.: A mda-compliant environment for developing user interfaces of information systems. In: Advanced Information Systems Engineering, pp. 16–31. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Grant Agency of the Czech Technical University in Prague, Grant No. SGS14/198/OHK3/3T/13.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Czech Technical University in Prague, Prague, 121 35, CZ, Czech Republic

    Karel Cemus, Filip Klimes & Ondrej Kratochvil

  2. Department of Computer Science, Baylor University, Waco, TX, 76798, USA

    Tomas Cerny

Authors
  1. Karel Cemus
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Filip Klimes
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Ondrej Kratochvil
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Tomas Cerny
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Karel Cemus.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Cemus, K., Klimes, F., Kratochvil, O. et al. Separation of concerns for distributed cross-platform context-aware user interfaces. Cluster Comput 20, 2355–2362 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10586-017-0794-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10586-017-0794-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation