Metadata-Driven User Interfaces

Metadata-Driven User Interfaces: "Many business applications require the user interface (UI) to be extensible as the requirements vary from one customer to another and from one end user to another. Client-side business logic for the UI may also need customization based on individual user need. A screen layout for a user might be different from another user. This may include control position, visibility, and so forth. Or, there may be various UIs for various devices such as SmartPhones, Tablet devices, or PDAs. Client-side business logic customization also includes customizing validation rules, changing control properties, and other modifications. For example, a manager may have different options for deleting and moving files than a subordinate has. There are many techniques for enabling business applications to be extensible or customizable. Most applications solve this problem by storing customizable items such as UI layout and client-side business logic as metadata in a repository. This metadata can then be interpreted by a run-time engine to display the screen to users and to execute the client-side business logic when the user performs an action on the screen. The advantages of this approach are twofold. First, you do not need to redeploy components on the presentation layer as the customization is done in a central repository. Second, this requires only a very light client installation—that is, you only need to deploy the run-time engine to the client machine."