Synthesizing Information Systems: the APIS Project

This article presents the main features of the APIS project that addresses the rapid development of information systems from formal specifications. Information systems are specified using EB, a trace-based formal language. The sequences of input events accepted by the system are described with a process algebra; they represent the valid traces of the information system. Entity types, associations and attributes are described using a class diagram and computed by means of recursive functions defined on the valid traces of the system. In the APIS framework, three tools have been developed. A first tool, called DCI-WEB, allows the generation of Web interfaces from GUI specifications. To query and/or to update the system, an end-user can trigger an event through the Web interface. This event is then analyzed by EBPAI, an interpreter for EB process expressions. Finally, the tool EBTG generates, for each EB action, a Java program that executes a relational database transaction. The synthesized transactions implement the specification of the information system’s data structure and are used by the interpreter to update or query the database. The article also brings out the main future developments of the project.