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Distributed and Self-organizing Systems
Distributed and Self-organizing Systems
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From Choreographed to Hybrid User Interface Mashups: A Generic Transformation Approach

Introduction

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Mashups utilizing publish-subscribe-based inter-widget communication approach do not require users to establish connections between widgets explicitly. Communication, i. e. data and control flows emerge as soon as widgets are put together in a workspace (so called choreographed user interface mashups, cf. [1]). Technically, this is achieved by employing the event-driven approach via publish-subscribe messaging pattern (pub/sub): widgets autonomously subscribe and publish messages on different communication channels, so-called topics. A message bus running within a browser takes care of delivering messages to all interested parties, i. e., widgets subscribed to the corresponding topics.

This, however, implies a lack of awareness and control by end users - an implication which was confirmed in the interviews and observations during the user studies [2]. A profound analysis of the described problems, analysis of possible solutions from related research fields and implications for the PubSub-based systems can be found in the corresponding paper [3].

This paper presents an approach to extend choreographed mashup platforms towards so called hybrid ones. We show, how the emerged inter-widget communication flow can be visualized and how users can be enabled to adjust it.

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Further Readings

[1] Scott Wilson, Florian Daniel, Uwe Jugel and Stefano Soi. Orchestrated User Interface Mashups Using W3C Widgets. ICWE 2011 Workshops, June 2011, Springer, Pages 49-61.

[2] The OMELETTE Project (FP7/2010-2013 GA n 257635). D7.4 - evaluations of demonstrators report. Public deliverable, 2013.

[3] Olexiy Chudnovskyy, Stefan Pietschmann, Matthias Niederhausen, Vadim Chepegin, David Griffiths, Martin Gaedke. Awareness and Control for Inter-Widget Communication: Challenges and Solutions (Conference Paper) Proceedings of 13th International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE2013). Aalborg, Denmark. July 08-12, 2013

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