designing data-intensive mobile applications: the mobml approach

Università degli Studi dell’Aquila

Collaborative

Design and Development Data-

Intensive Mobile ApplicationsMirco Franzago, Ivano Malavolta, Henry Muccini

DISIM, University of L’Aquila

henry.muccini@univaq.it, @muccinihenry, www.henrymuccini.com

@MobileSoft 2014, Hyderabad – June 2014

App

Developer

Content Manager

Navigation

MLData

UI ML

UI Designer

Business Logic

Server Side Developer

forforforfor

The problem we want to deal with 2

Recurring issues and challenges in app development

Technical (fragmentation, code reuse, frequent

changes, monitoring analysis and testing, etc.)

Design issues

Limited reasoning in the context

Limited information architecture

engineering

Stakeholder diversity

Best practices for app design and development are available, but mobile

applications are still developed with ad-hoc development processes, and

best practices are still not automated.

Goals of our proposal

To codify best design practices into a Model-

Driven Engineering language and framework

3

An

aly

sis

r

App

Developer

Anal

ysis r

Analysis

results

1

A

1 2

A

2 n

A

n

Content ManagerPlugin developers

Navigation

MLData

UI ML

UI Designer

MobML

Analysis

MobL

Code

The MobML Framework

Business Logic

An

alyACode

Modeling environment for

Mobile Applications

Server Side

Developer

MobML

Testing

Analysis and

Code

Generation

Principles4

Participatory design

Collaborative Design

Multi-view Modeling Languages

Hiding MDE complexities

A

B

C

D

A. Participatory Design

“Participatory design … is an approach to design

attempting to actively involve all

stakeholders (e.g. employees, partners, customers,

citizens, end users) in the design process to help ensure

the result meets their needs and is usable” [Wikipedia]

5

Stakeholder diversity

B. Collaborative Design6

Integration with source codeReal-time collaboration

Tangibility

C. Multi-view Modeling Language7

Separation of concerns

Platform independence

Models Reuse

Extensibility

D. Hiding MDE complexities8

Sliding: go to page 2

Click: go to the

category page

Collaborative Framework

Goals of our proposal

To codify best design practices into a Model-

Driven Engineering language and framework

9

An

aly

sis

r

App

Developer

Anal

ysis r

Analysis

results

1

A

1 2

A

2 n

A

n

Content ManagerPlugin developers

Navigation

MLData

UI ML

UI Designer

MobML

Analysis

MobL

Code

Business Logic

An

alyACode

Modeling environment

Server Side

Developer

MobML

Testing

Analysis and

Code

Generation

The MobML Design Decisions10

Web-based Framework

UI, Navigation, Data, Business Logic views

Only Data-Intensive Mobile apps

Synchronous, Semi-synch, Asynchronous, …

Targeting Apache Cordova (so far)

Related Work11

MobML Quill MD2 IFML WAE

Mobile-specific

Multiple stakeholders

Code generation

Cross-platform code

Analysis (yet)

On-demand deployment

Collaborative

Real-time support

Graphical notation

User-oriented

Technology agnostic

Multiple stakeholders

Domain-specific

Tool: Web-based

Enterprise-oriented

Technology agnostic

Single stakeholder: engineer

Based on UML

Tool: Eclipse-based

12

Future Work

� Formal definition of the proposed languages

� Pre-deployment analysis for enforcing design best practicesand guidelines

� Generic framework for managing real-time collaborative modeling

� Empirical evidence about the effectiveness of the approachand about the quality of hybrid apps w.r.t. native apps

13

Contacts

If you are interested in the proposed approach:

14

Stop by after the presentation

Contact me at henry.muccini@univaq.it

Tweet @muccinihenry

Skype me at henry.muccini

Call me ☺☺☺☺

Franzago, Malavolta, Muccini “Towards a Collaborative Framework for the Design

and Development of Data-Intensive Mobile Applications” @MobileSoft2014