Skip to main content

Lund University Publications

LUND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

PalCom Meets the End-User: Enabling Interaction with PalCom-based Systems

Johnsson, Björn A LU orcid (2014)
Abstract
When developing applications for end-user nodes in distributed systems, it is not unusual to find that the business logic part of the solution is relatively inexpensive to develop. The resource intense parts of the solution are more likely to be those of presenting the functionality provided by the node to the end-user, and of connecting the node with the rest of the system. By considering systems that connect nodes using the PalCom middleware, this thesis presents work on a new technology to create graphical solutions for the end-user nodes of such systems. The criteria for the technology were formulated as a long-term aspiration of introducing a graphical editor for a PalCom specific User Interface Description Language (UIDL).... (More)
When developing applications for end-user nodes in distributed systems, it is not unusual to find that the business logic part of the solution is relatively inexpensive to develop. The resource intense parts of the solution are more likely to be those of presenting the functionality provided by the node to the end-user, and of connecting the node with the rest of the system. By considering systems that connect nodes using the PalCom middleware, this thesis presents work on a new technology to create graphical solutions for the end-user nodes of such systems. The criteria for the technology were formulated as a long-term aspiration of introducing a graphical editor for a PalCom specific User Interface Description Language (UIDL). Technically inexperienced PalCom users were introduced as the main target audience for the new technology, meaning no programming should be required for creating graphical solutions. To allow for this, a novel approach of turning the conventional way of specifying functionality 180° was introduced. The primary contribution of this work, serving as a first step towards the long-term aspirations, is the PalCom specific UIDL entitled PML – PalCom User Interface Markup Language. This language contains constructs that realize the ambition of inverted functionality specification, and will lie as a basis for the graphical editor that is to be developed in future work. The language was evaluated in a small scale user case study. The results were indicative of the high efficiency of PML, showing shorter developments time than the alternatives by a factor of 10. It was also evaluated in the real-world context of the itACiH project, showing the scalability potential of the language and its usability in the real world. For PalCom-based systems, PML has already been proved a competent option for creating graphical solutions, and will only grow more efficient with future research. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
supervisor
organization
publishing date
type
Thesis
publication status
published
subject
pages
99 pages
publisher
Department of Computer Science, Lund University
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
5517e6e6-8d24-4897-95c3-7f0d19747424 (old id 8310381)
date added to LUP
2016-04-04 10:19:28
date last changed
2021-05-06 08:36:52
@misc{5517e6e6-8d24-4897-95c3-7f0d19747424,
  abstract     = {{When developing applications for end-user nodes in distributed systems, it is not unusual to find that the business logic part of the solution is relatively inexpensive to develop. The resource intense parts of the solution are more likely to be those of presenting the functionality provided by the node to the end-user, and of connecting the node with the rest of the system. By considering systems that connect nodes using the PalCom middleware, this thesis presents work on a new technology to create graphical solutions for the end-user nodes of such systems. The criteria for the technology were formulated as a long-term aspiration of introducing a graphical editor for a PalCom specific User Interface Description Language (UIDL). Technically inexperienced PalCom users were introduced as the main target audience for the new technology, meaning no programming should be required for creating graphical solutions. To allow for this, a novel approach of turning the conventional way of specifying functionality 180° was introduced. The primary contribution of this work, serving as a first step towards the long-term aspirations, is the PalCom specific UIDL entitled PML – PalCom User Interface Markup Language. This language contains constructs that realize the ambition of inverted functionality specification, and will lie as a basis for the graphical editor that is to be developed in future work. The language was evaluated in a small scale user case study. The results were indicative of the high efficiency of PML, showing shorter developments time than the alternatives by a factor of 10. It was also evaluated in the real-world context of the itACiH project, showing the scalability potential of the language and its usability in the real world. For PalCom-based systems, PML has already been proved a competent option for creating graphical solutions, and will only grow more efficient with future research.}},
  author       = {{Johnsson, Björn A}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Licentiate Thesis}},
  publisher    = {{Department of Computer Science, Lund University}},
  title        = {{PalCom Meets the End-User: Enabling Interaction with PalCom-based Systems}},
  url          = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/5512170/8310401.pdf}},
  year         = {{2014}},
}