User Interface Composition with COTS-UI and Trading Approaches: Application for Web-Based Environmental Information Systems

Due to the globalization of the information and knowledge society on the Internet, modern Web-based Information Systems (WIS) must be flexible and prepared to be easily accessible and manageable in real-time. In recent times it has received a special interest the globalization of information through a common vocabulary (i.e., ontologies), and the standardized way in which information is retrieved on the Web (i.e., powerful search engines, and intelligent software agents). These same principles of globalization and standardization should also be valid for the user interfaces of the WIS, but they are built on traditional development paradigms. In this paper we present an approach to reduce the gap of globalization/standardization in the generation of WIS user interfaces by using a real-time “bottom-up” composition perspective with COTSinterface components (type interface widgets) and trading services.