The Study On User Interface Description Based On Object Oriented Petri Net

Users interact with a system that requires frequent interaction mainly through its user interface. Whether a system can be accepted highly depends on the quality of its user interface. So the description of user interface is very important during the process of software development. It can describe the real world better, make human-machine interaction more convenient and facilitate the realization of engineering automation.But general methods for user interface description are mainly used to specify the layout and style of user interface. Few provide support to specify dynamic behaviors. And some methods model the user interface through several models from different sides of the application, which makes the mapping among the models very complicated. Therefore, how to enhance the support for interactive behaviors of user interface and model user interface simply and intuitionisticly is becoming an important problem during software development.This paper firstly analyzes the basic characteristics of Petri nets, the advantages of modeling the static form and dynamic behaviors of user interface by Petri net, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of the model for describing user interface proposed based on Petri net. Secondly, it extends the definition of Petri net and proposes an Object-Oriented Petri Net (OOPN). It also perfects various characteristics of object-oriented technology. Thirdly, it defines the relationship between the structure and execution semantics of OOPN and the static form and dynamic behaviors of user interface. Then, a method based on OOPN for describing the user interface is proposed to resolve the problems that exist in other models. Finally, this method is validated by an example of a management system of student information.Object-Oriented Petri Net integrates the advantages of both Petri nets and object-oriented technology. As a formal development tool, Petri net has strict mathematical semantics and can be used to analyze and validate a system conveniently to address the problems of lacking of formal description and validation in object-oriented technology. Object-oriented technology is characterized by abstract, inheritance, encapsulation and polymorphism. It can effectively resolve state space explosive problem and the difficulty in modification and maintenance when a system is modeled by Petri net. By integrating object-oriented technology and Petri net, OOPN as a result combines the static form and dynamic behaviors of user interface. Therefore, it makes the description of user interface and the modeling of interaction more simple and intuitionistic. It also reduces the complexity of modeling and enhances the reusability, maintainability of the model.