To efficiently create sophisticated multimedia presentations (electron
ic product catalogues) the entire development cycle has to be taken in
to account. We have developed a set of tools designed for distributed
use based on communication via the WWW that support all phases of this
process. The software-generating tool GASSI is an essential component
of this toolkit. Given a formal specification of a multimedia present
ation it automatically generates an implementation. This dramatically
reduces the development time and costs as well as the chances for prog
ramming errors. The GASSI system is written in Java and it also create
s Java code.