The spider environment

Visual composition is an interactive development of different applications by the direct manipulation of reusable components. We believe that the visu al composition approach deals directly with the complexity of large softwar e systems, making their development easier, more flexible, and easier to be understood. This is accomplished by implementing abstraction, reuse and vi sualization concepts. The developer becomes a component builder and no long er creates large applications that are hard to maintain and enhance. The us er will have the freedom to choose the components he needs to build an appl ication, and to mix and match components from different developers until th e desired functionality is achieved. The visual Spider environment allows t he creation of different kinds of applications. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wil ey & Sons, Ltd.