M-base: enduser-initiative application development based on message flow and componentware

An explosive increase in end user computing on distributed systems requires that end users develop application software by themselves. One solution is given as a formula of "a domain model/spl equiv/a computation model." This formula implies that one task in a domain model of cooperative work corresponds to one object in a computation model based on an object oriented model. The application development environment, M-base, supports this formula for cooperative systems such as groupware and workflow systems. At the first stage, the system behavior at a macro level is expressed by using a modeling and simulation tool for constructing a message driven model while focusing on message flow and componentware. At the second stage, a source program in a script language is generated automatically from the message driven model. Furthermore, if necessary, static structure and detailed specifications of objects are expressed in the script language. Communication among objects is performed by a set of messages instead of a message, for implementation of flexible workflow.