Year of Award

2008

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

Master of Science (MS)

Degree Name

Computer Science

Department or School/College

Department of Computer Science

Committee Chair

Joel Henry

Commitee Members

Jeff Shay, Jesse Johnson

Keywords

Antarctica, design patterns, EISMINT, factory pattern, GLIMMER, Greenland, ice sheet modeling, IDL, inheritance, interface description language, ISIS, Java, scientific software, simulation, software engineering, user interface, XML

Abstract

The scientific domain presents unique challenges to software developers. This thesis describes the application of design patterns to the problem of dynamically changing interfaces to scientific application software (GLIMMER, which performs ice sheet modeling). In its present form, GLIMMER uses a text configuration file to define model behavior, set parameters, and structure model input/output (I/O). The creation of the configuration file presents a significant problem to users due to its format and complexity. GLIMMER is still under development, and the number of changes to configuration parameters, parameter types, and parameter dependencies makes devel-opment of any single interface of use only for a short term. The application of design patterns described here resulted in an interface specification tool that then generates multiple versions of a user interface usable across a wide variety of configuration pa-rameter types, values, and dependencies. The resulting products have leveraged de-sign patterns and solved problems associated with design pattern usage not found in the specialized software engineering literature.

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© Copyright 2008 Daniel Ross Lande