M-base: an application development environment for end-user computing based on message flow

Explosive increase in end-user computing on distributed systems requires that end-users develop application software by themselves. One solution is given as a formula of “a domain model≡a computation model”. This formula implies that one task in a domain model of cooperative work corresponds to one object in a computation model based on an object-oriented model. Application development environment, M-base, supports this formula for cooperative systems such as groupware and work flow systems. At the first stage, the system behavior at a macro level is expressed by using a modeling and simulation tool for constructing a message-driven model while focusing on message flow. At the second stage, static structure and detailed specifications of objects are expressed in a script language. Communication among objects is performed by a set of messages instead of a message, for implementation of flexible work flow