Development of Multimedia Applications
Heinrich Hußmann, Andreas Pleuß
The development of multimedia applications is a branch of increasing importance. A sophisticated interactive user interface containing different media types is used e.g. in training or simulation software but also increasingly in other kinds of applications. An additional example with a very huge market is computer games.
Multimedia applications are mostly implemented using specific authoring tools or programming languages, like Flash/ActionScript or Director. However, the development often requires high effort. This is mainly caused by the lack of adequate concepts and tools supporting software engineering principles for this application domain. Maintainability and reusability are often neglected. Concepts for an appropriate design phase are missing. In addition, most current authoring tools offer only little support for structuring the applications.
Our goal is to develop adequate concepts and tools for multimedia application development. Considering software engineering principles and best practices of common application development, we aim at solutions customized for the specific needs of the multimedia domain.
Within this scope we currently focus on the following subtopics:
Model-Driven Development of Multimedia Applications
We propose a model-driven approach for the development of multimedia applications. Therefore we base on a modeling language, called Multimedia Modeling Language (MML), suitable to model the specific aspects of this application type, such as:
- integration of media objects,
- high degree of interaction,
- synchronization, and
- high importance of the user interface.
The modeling language corresponds as much as possible to the existing de-facto standard UML. It also considers several existing research approaches, in particular OMMMA.
The modeling language acts as base for a model-driven development approach for multimedia applications. Model Driven Development relies on a process using high-level abstract representations of a system design and stepwise refinement into specific executable code. In particular, it distinguishes between a platform-independent level of design and the refinement onto platform-specific designs. Some main benefits of a Model-Driven development style for the development of multimedia applications are:
- platform independence,
- integration of graphical design and software design, and
- better structured applications, increasing maintainability and reusability.
In our approach, the transformation from the models (in our multimedia-specific modeling language) to executable code is semi-automatic. The models contain only information about the structure and overall behavior of the application. From this model information we automatically generate code skeletons. The detailed behavior - i.e. the content of methods - as well as the concrete graphical design is not specified in the model. Thus, the generated code contains placeholders, which are implemented by the developer directly by hand, usually using the respective authoring tools.
For tool support we develop a modeling tool based on the Eclipse technology. We develop code generators supporting e.g. Flash/ActionScript and SVG/JavaScript. Furthermore we aim for the extension of existing multimedia authoring tools to additionally support the further processing of the generated code as well as round-trip-engineering.
Project Topics/Projektarbeitsthemen
(in german language only)
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