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The WL++ Environment for Model-Driven Engineering of Cross-Platform Mobile Applications

  • Author / Creator
    Bazelli, Blerina
  • With the proliferation of mobile devices and the adoption of mobile applications
    as the de-facto mediators for most daily-life activities, including communication,
    shopping and edutainment, the systematization of mobile software engineering has
    become an important research problem. Mobile-application construction must become
    more systematic, flexible and adaptable, and less costly with reduced time to
    market. Code-generation techniques based on domain-specific languages present
    both opportunities and challenges for the construction of such applications. In this
    thesis, we propose an abstract model to represent catalogue-style mobile applications
    and a graphical code-generation environment, namely WL++, for creating
    such mobile applications, based on specifications of the application back-end data
    model and its user-interaction behavior. Our framework enables the rapid development
    of multi-platform mobile applications, relying on state-of-the-art technologies
    such asWorklight and Backbone.js. More specifically, WL++ allows developers to
    create diagrammatic models of the to-be-generated application’s logical model and
    annotate them with information regarding the user interface widgets used to interact
    with the model elements. Then, it produces a relational back-end for storing the
    model data, a set of RESTful APIs for accessing and updating the back-end, and
    a multi-platform application that relies on the IBM Worklight framework to access
    the APIs and render the relevant data through the chosen widgets. We describe the
    WL++ mobile-app generation framework and we illustrate its functionality with
    three applications.

  • Subjects / Keywords
  • Graduation date
    Fall 2014
  • Type of Item
    Thesis
  • Degree
    Master of Science
  • DOI
    https://doi.org/10.7939/R3183498M
  • License
    This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.