Components with Semantic Interfaces

E. Kantorowitz

Computer Science Dept. Technion



A JAVA application may run on any platform for which a JVM exists. However, 
a Graphical User Interface (GUI) coded in JAVA for a large PC screen may not 
fit in the small screen of a cellular phone. It is therefore required to 
code a different version of the application for the phone that produces a 
GUI fitting its small screen. Having separate versions of an applications 
for different platforms involves high development and maintenance cost. An 
application developed with our WebSI framework is composed of two different 
components. The Application Logic (AL) component implements the business 
logic part of the application and contains no GUI code at all. The GUI code 
is in a component called Interaction Style ((IS). The same single AL 
component runs on all platforms without any change. In order to run on a PC 
it is combined with an IS that produces a PC GUI. To run on a phone, the 
same AL component is combined with an IS that produces a phone GUI. 
Combining an AL component with different IS components is immediate as all 
IS have same semantic interface. An AL may thus be reused on different 
platforms and a platform IS may be reused with different AL components. We 
report on the pros and cons observed in student projects.  Possible future 
applications of components with semantic interfaces will be discussed.