Design and Implementation of an MVC-Based Architecture for E-Commerce Applications

Although the separation of a model from its visual representation (view) implies well-known benefits, available Java libraries do not sufficiently support this concept. This paper presents a straightforward way to smoothly enhance Java libraries in this direction independently of the particular graphic user interface (GUI) library. The lean framework JGadgets, which was inspired by the Oberon Gadgets system, allows developers to focus on model programming only. This significantly reduces development costs, in particular in the realm of quite simple, form-based GUIs, which are commonplace in commercial e-business systems. The authors first present a case study implemented on top of JGadgets that demonstrates the benefits of the MVC architecture. They then go on to sketch the reflection-based design of JGadgets itself.