Component Based Configurable User Interface Management System

UIMS (User Interface Management System) has many advantages than other UI tools, such as better efficiency, better quality and less maintain cost, etc. Many researches have been made on UIMS from its appearance. And there are also many prototype systems. But most of these systems have one or more disadvantages below: limited field, not generally purpose, bad portability, bad adaptability and bad extensibility, etc.This thesis discusses some key technologies of UIMS firstly, such as concept models and architectures, presentation method and flow control. After introducing some basic knowledge of Component and XML, the concept of Component Based Configurable UIMS is presented. Furthermore, by analyzing the traditional UIMS, some core technologies are discussed. Application is separated into three parts in this UIMS system, which are user interface description, interaction definition and computation component. A run-time manager is used to connect and manage these models. This architecture guarantees the separation between UI and the semantics quite well, and guarantees the dialogue independency. To implement a configurable UI, a UI Warehouse plays an important role in the system, which is advised to be a relation database.This mechanism can generate the prototype user interface of target application efficiently, with good quality and uniform style. It has high agility and adaptability by the characteristics of XML, providing ability to extend to multi-channels and 3D user interface. End-user Adaptability is also one of the benefits. Even with little programming knowledge, users can modify parts of the system, which improving the adaptability and reducing the maintain cost obviously.Based on the study in this thesis, a prototype system is implemented. It proves that this prototype system has excellent integrating ability with popular RAD tools by the development details of an example application.