MDA-Based UI Modeling and Transformation of Spoken Dialog Systems

Traditional model driven architecture (MDA) approaches to software application development are appropriate for building systems with visual user interfaces. However, they are not suitable for designing of dialog systems. A more effective approach to modeling and transforming these complex characters of dialog systems is required. In this paper, we present a model-driven approach which first constructs platform independent model (PIM) using use case diagram, activity diagram, Net-PAC model and sequence diagram. Once the use case diagrams and activity diagrams are constructed, the voice user interfaces can be identified and specifies their structure and behavior specification by Net-PAC model and sequence diagram respectively. Then the PIM is transformed to the platform specific model (PSM) according to the transformation rules we develop. After the PSM is obtained, it can be used to generate the code model in VoiceXML. Through the approach, dialog systems can be developed effectively.