Using XML to semi-automatically derive user interfaces

Today, more and more data is being stored electronically, requiring systems to be able to save and retrieve large amounts of data efficiently. At the same time, user interfaces have to satisfy specific quality-of-service requirements. For example, in order to have a multimedia digital library supporting three different kinds of output devices (17" screens, PDAs, and mobile phones), each user interface has to be programmed separately according to its representation capabilities. This means that if the output devices are becoming more advanced, e.g., are colored or have higher resolutions, the interface parameters will change and, in many cases, the quality-of-service requirements too. This results in the user interfaces having to be amended or sometimes completely rewritten. The same applies when additional devices need to be supported, and they subsequently require new user interfaces to be built from scratch. Obviously, this is time-consuming and costly. The authors present an approach using XML as the basic technology to semiautomatically derive any kind of user interface for data intensive systems