Implementing the model-view-controller paradigm in Ada 95

Abstract

The Model-View-Controller (MVC) paradigm was developed in conjunction with the Smalltalk programming language to provide the programmer a semi-automated means to create graphical user interfaces for Smalltalk applications. This paper presents the implementation of an MVC framework using Ada 95. Features of our implementation include an extensible architecture for supporting new platforms, event-driven behavior, and a novel registrationbased broadcast notification mechanism. We show how several of the new Ada 95 language features are used to build the framework. In addition, we compare at length the differences between the classical Smalltalk MVC implementation and our Ada 95 implementation, and find that the Ada framework offers the application developer a number of advantages.