Model-Driven Development of Digital Libraries: Generating the User Interface

Digital Libraries (DLs) are extremely complex information systems that integrate findings from disciplines such as hypertext, information retrieval, multimedia services, database management, and human-computer interaction. Designers of DLs are often multidisciplinary teams, which include library technical staff and computer scientists. Wasted effort and poor inter-operability can therefore ensue, raising the costs of DLs and risking the fluidity of information assets. To alleviate these problems, we use a model-driven approach for the design and automatic generation of code for DLs. In particular, we use a Domain Specific Visual Language (DSVL) made of four diagram types (collection, structural, service and societal) which describe the different aspects of a DL. We have built a code generator able to produce XUL code from the design models for the DL user interface. This XUL code integrates predefined components for the different services, according to the model specification.