Experiences developing architectures for realizing thin‐client diagram editing tools

Abstract

Diagram-centric applications such as software design tools, project planning tools and business process modelling tools are usually 'thick-client' applications running as stand-alone desktop applications. There are several advantages to providing such design tools as Web-based or even PDA-and mobile-phonebased applications. These include ease of access and upgrade, provision of collaborative work support and Web-based integration with other applications. However, building such thin-client diagram editing tools is very challenging. We have developed several thin-client diagram editing applications realized as a set of plug-in extensions to a meta-tool for visual design environment development. In this paper, we discuss key user interaction and software architecture issues, illustrate examples of interacting with our thin-client diagram editing tools, describe our design and implementation approaches, and present the results of several different evaluations of the resultant applications. Our experiences will be useful for those interested in developing their own thin-client diagram editing architectures and applications. user interface design. Examples of diagram types include general diagrams, such as trees for depicting hierarchies and graphs for network, relationship and dependency specification, together with more specialized domain-specific notations, such as Gantt and Pert charts for project management or UML diagrams for software design. Traditional diagramming tools for such applications are built using thickclient, window-based interfaces that limit their use to desktop and laptop computers. This approach provides highly responsive diagram editing and viewing facilities, can leverage sophisticated thickclient interaction techniques and enables the management of information on local workstations [1][2][3]. The disadvantages of this approach include the need to install and update software on every user's workstation, the complexity and learning curve associated with using many tool interfaces, the complex, heavyweight architectures needed to support collaborative editing, and the lack of support in most tools for modifying diagramming notations and semantics [4][5][6].To improve access to these tools, thin-client diagramming approaches [1,7] have been proposed and prototyped. These typically use a Web browser for viewing and sometimes editing the diagrams. Users view diagrams as the content of a 'Web page' that also includes controls such as buttons and links for modifying the diagram or moving to other diagrams [5,8]. Diagrams may be constructed with combinations of automatic and manual layout, resizing, highlighting and so on. Technologies to render the diagrams include GIF images, SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) renderings and 3D VRML (Virtual Reality Modelling Language) visualizations. The potential advantages of this approach are a consistent look and feel across all Web-based diagramming tools, the use of Web page design techniques to aid interaction and learning, limited install and update problems, an...

Modelling on mobile devices

“…In particular, the meta-modelling tool Pounamu/Thin [113] produces Java-based multi-view editors for graphical modelling languages. It was initially designed as a desktop application, which later was extended to generate web and (Nokia) mobile clients [36,112,113] (and see also the follow-up tool Marama/Thin [35]). López-Jaquero et al [56] synthesize multi-touch domain-specific editors.…”