Towards an MDA-based approach for development of a structural scope of the presentation layer[Využití konceptu MDA ve vývoji strukturální oblasti prezentační vrstvy]

This paper presents an approach for developing the presentation layer of software applications. The approach is based on the concept of the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) and uses a UML - based model of graphical user interfaces, which is created according to rules defined in a meta - model. The meta - model is not oriented to a particular platform, thus all designed models can be created independently of the programming language and widget library. This platform independent UML based model can be transformed into source - code for an arbitrary programming language and can be used in a software development process.The meta - model of our approach is an extension of the common UML and provides support for modeling the presentation layer. The meta - model thus fills a gap that exists in modeling three - layered software applications, beside the application and the data layer. By providing this possibility for modeling the presentation layer, we can crucially impact current approaches to the development of three layered software applications. All model artifacts contain essential information about the graphical user interface and can be used for a code generation. Since the UML is widely used by analysts, they can produce models which de-facto represent source code and thus they reduce the workload for programmers, who create source code by some traditional approaches. Our model - based approach also strictly separates the appearance and the structure of graphical user - interfaces and both of them are developed separately, which brings higher modularity of software.In this paper, we demonstrate our development approach by focusing on the structure of graphical user interfaces. Our approach is influenced by the concept of Model Driven Architecture and we deal with all related issues, such as meta - model, user models, model transformations and source - code generation. For evaluating our approach, we designed and developed a software framework, we integrated it into a generic modeling tool, and used approach principles during the development of a module of an information system.