Model-Driven Development of Interactive Multimedia Applications

The development of highly interactive multimedia applications is
still a challenging and complex task. In addition to the
application logic, multimedia applications typically provide a
sophisticated user interface with integrated media objects. As a
consequence, the development process involves different experts for
software design, user interface design, and media design. There is
still a lack of concepts for a systematic development which
integrates these aspects. This thesis provides a model-driven
development approach addressing this problem. Therefore it
introduces the Multimedia Modeling Language (MML), a visual
modeling language supporting a design phase in multimedia
application development. The language is oriented on
well-established software engineering concepts, like UML 2, and
integrates concepts from the areas of multimedia development and
model-based user interface development. MML allows the generation
of code skeletons from the models. Thereby, the core idea is to
generate code skeletons which can be directly processed in
multimedia authoring tools. In this way, the strengths of both are
combined: Authoring tools are used to perform the creative
development tasks while models are used to design the overall
application structure and to enable a well-coordinated development
process. This is demonstrated using the professional authoring tool
Adobe Flash. MML is supported by modeling and code generation tools
which have been used to validate the approach over several years in
various student projects and teaching courses. Additional
prototypes have been developed to demonstrate, e.g., the ability to
generate code for different target platforms. Finally, it is
discussed how models can contribute in general to a better
integration of well-structured software development and creative
visual design.