Development of an aspect-oriented help tool

• Grant number: 09/10693-8
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): November 01, 2009
• Effective date (End): October 31, 2010
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Computer Science - Computing Methodologies and Techniques
• Principal researcher: Elisa Yumi Nakagawa
• Grantee: Rodrigo Jardim da Fonseca
• Home Institution: Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação (ICMC). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The usability of software systems, including web systems, depends on not only an adequate user interface, but also an online help that can be contribute to better understand and use the systems. Many works have investigated the building of help contents; however, they have not concentrated in designing and implementing help tools, mainly those easily configured and reused in other systems. Besides that, it is observed that functionalities related to help are sometimes scattered in different parts of a system. Therefore, help can be classified as a crosscutting concern. Thus, the main objective of this project is to develop an independent tool that manages and avails help contents to other software systems, particulary web system. For this, it will be used the idea of help as a crosscutting concern and AOP (Aspect-Oriented Programming) mechanisms will be used inorder to design and implement this tool. Aiming at validate the idea and the tool, a casestudy will be conducted using Memória Virtual, a free web system that catalogues and avails information about historical holding. As main result, we aim at having a tool that can be easily integrated in different web systems, providing help contents to these systems and contributing to improve the software quality.