Visual reflection library: a framework for declarative GUI programming on the Java platform

Michael Hoffer*, Christian Poliwoda, Gabriel Wittum

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

The automated mapping of program functionality to intuitive user interfaces is a highly challenging task. Nevertheless it is a promising way to significantly improve software quality by simplifying the development process. This paper describes a method for a declarative and fully automated creation of graphical user interfaces from Java objects, i.e. the information accessible via the Java Reflection API. For this purpose we created the Visual Reflection Library (VRL). VRL interfaces are able to represent complex workflows and allow for a certain degree of visual programming. We start by describing an application: the development of an interactive user interface for the simulation system UG. By shortly discussing the requirements for such an interface, we will explain the reasons for creating VRL and the benefits we gained from it. After that we give an overview of our methods and show several applications. We end by summarizing our results and giving a future outlook.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)181-192
Number of pages12
JournalComputing and Visualization in Science
Volume16
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 2013
Externally publishedYes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • Software
  • Modeling and Simulation
  • General Engineering
  • Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
  • Computational Theory and Mathematics

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