Facing Interaction-Rich RIAs: The Orchestration Model

Promptness, efficiency and stickiness are among the advantages exhibited by the new crop of rich Internet applications (RIAs). These advantages came at the cost of increasing the complexity of development. Additionally, the plethora of RIA frameworks can lock this code into a specific platform. This scenario advises for using model-driven development (MDD). This paper focuses on interactionrich RIAs by addressing two issues: (1) interaction dependencies among widgets, and (2) grouping of widgets into Ajax pages. These concerns are captured in the Orchestration Model. MDD wise, OO-H metamodels accounts for the PIMs whereas Google Web Toolkit is the selected PSM. During transformation, a "message broker" pattern is introduced to decouple widgets from their dependencies. When Ajax pages are generated, heuristics are introduced to find a balance between communication overhead, presentation readiness and maintainability. A running example is used throughout.