A component based approach to human computer interaction [Elektronische Ressource] : specification, composition, and application to information services / vorgelegt von Thomas Feyer

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• Informatik

Informations

• Publié par: brandenburgische_technische_universitat_cottbus
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2003
• Nombre de lectures: 21
• Langue: English

Extrait

A Component Based Approach to
Human Computer Interaction
Specification, Composition, and Application to
Information Services
Von der Fakultat¨ fur¨ Mathematik, Naturwissenschaften und Informatik
¨der Brandenburgischen Technischen Universitat Cottbus
zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades
Doktor der Naturwissenschaften
(Dr. rer. nat.)
genehmigte Dissertation
vorgelegt von
Diplom Informatiker
Thomas Feyer
geboren am 14. September 1972 in Halle
Gutachter: Prof. Dr. rer. nat. habil. Bernhard Thalheim Prof. Mag. Dr. rer. nat. Dr. h. c. Heinrich C. Mayr
Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Ing. Hannu Jaakkola
Tag der mundlichen¨ Prufung:¨ 11. Dezember 2003To my father.Abstract
The discipline of software engineering is increasingly shifting from classical design
and development tasks towards tasks concerning reuse, adaptation, and integration.
Driving motivations for this shift are (i) decreasing development time and costs and
(ii) increasing quality of design results. Unfortunately, these new tasks are not yet
supported sufficiently. While classical approaches to information system’s design are
quite well suited to a design from scratch, they do not provide powerful concepts con
cerning reuse. Although encapsulation by means of functions, classes, or sub systems
provides opportunities for reusing functionality, methods concerning encapsulation of
dialog structures are commonly neglected. On the one hand, an approach to reusing seems quite promising wrt. design time and quality, since interaction
design has been recognized as a complex and time consuming task. On the other hand,
this approach reveals an inherentxity which must be resolved. It manifests at
the following questions:
How to encapsulate interaction by means of components?
Does component composition enable to derive complex interaction
from elementary?
How to verify (dynamic) properties of components wrt. quality of
user interaction?
How to ensure that a composition of components behaves as in
tended?
How to adapt components to particular application requirements?
Which new requirements does a component based design process
have to meet? In particular:
How to support the designer in identifying desired components?
How to identify relations between components as, for example, com
ponent refinement?
To tackle solutions to these questions, we identified three closely related research ar-
eas as a basis: (i) interaction patterns, (ii) interaction specification and design, and (iii)
iii ABSTRACT
component approaches. At the thesis, we selected promising models of these areas,
adapted them to our requirements, and provided an integrated treatment which com
bines the advantages of all of these approaches. Therewith, we hope that the results
of the thesis will contribute to the currently active research concerning component
technology and methods of reuse.Acknowledgments
This work has been developed within the last years at the database and information
system’s (dbis) group at BTU Cottbus. I would like to thank everybody who was
contributing to this work by discussions, support, as well as diversions. Especially, I
would like to express my gratitude to the following people:
First of all, I like to thank my advisor Prof. Bernhard Thalheim for his support, inspi
rations, and hospitality. For their effort to provide the reviewing, I like to thank Prof.
Heinrich Mayr and Prof. Hannu Jaakkola. Particularly, I thank the ”pre reviewers”
Steffen Jurk, Aleksander Binemann Zdanovicz, Gunar Fiedler, and Vojtech Vestenicky´
who contributed to the final appearance of the thesis. I would like to thank Wolfram
Clauß, Jana Lewerenz, Srinath Srinivasa, and the members of the former codesign
team for many fruitful discussions at the initial stage of the thesis. Regarding the ini
tial stage, I will not miss to thank Prof. Klaus Dieter Schewe for paving the way to the
BTU. A special thank I would like to send to Marcela Varas and her group at the Uni
versidad de Concepcion.´ Thank you for the interesting discussions and the perfectly
arranged stay at your group.
I also thank all students which I was allowed to advise — especially to Birk Heinze
for many discussions which provided essential ideas for this work. For discussions as
well as welcome diversions, I like to thank all former and current members of the dbis
team, in particular, our secretary Karla Kersten for her help at any incidents. Troubles
related to system administration were always fixed by Gunter¨ Millahn and Thomas
Kobienia. Thanks a lot.
Last but not least, I greatly thank my parents and my wife Christiane for all their
support and motivation.
iiiiv ACKNOWLEDGMENTSContents
Abstract i
Acknowledgments iii
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Interaction Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Towards Composable Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2 A Net Based Interaction Model 9
2.1 Introduction to Coloured Petri Nets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2 Definition of Interaction Nets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.3 Utilization of Nets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.4 Composition of Interaction Nets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.5 Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3 A Component Perspective 27
3.1 Stream Defined Component Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.1.1 Syntax and Semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.1.2 Behavioral Characterization of Composition . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.2 Component Semantics of Interaction Nets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.2.1 I/O Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.2.2 Behavioral Characterization of Net Composition . . . . . . . 48
3.2.3 Proof of the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
3.3 Components in Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
3.3.1 Component Refinement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.3.2 Properties and Assertions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
3.4 Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
vvi CONTENTS
4 Application to Information Services 73
4.1 A Component Based Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
4.2 UI Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
4.3 UI Composition Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4.3.1 Composition of UI Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4.3.2 Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
4.3.3 Refinement and Adaptation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
4.4 Realization Based on Interaction Nets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
4.4.1 Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
4.4.2 Context Transition Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
4.4.3 UI View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
4.4.4 Assertions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
4.4.5 Simulation and Prototyping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
4.5 Verification of Ergonomic Aspects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
4.6 A Case Study: Interactive Catalogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
4.7 Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
5 Related Work 139
5.1 Design Models for Web Information Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
5.1.1 Araneus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
5.1.2 OOHDM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
5.1.3 Torii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
5.1.4 WebComposition Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
5.1.5 View Centered Design Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
5.2 Component Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
5.2.1 A Design Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
5.2.2 Related Component Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
5.3 Design of Information Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
6 Conclusions 153
6.1 A Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
6.2 Open Problems and Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154