Integrating the user interface in an object-oriented measurement system

The aim of this work is to apply the object-oriented (OO) programming technology to the development of computer-based measurement systems. The chosen framework is centred on a concurrent, time-sensitive, OO programming model, which in general is suited to the construction of real-time applications. The paper first highlights basic methodological issues of the proposed model and its usefulness in the construction of the software of an automatic measurement system. Then it concentrates on a possible realization of the user interface which strictly adheres to the OO paradigm and fits naturally into the adopted model. A careful layering of the architecture together with a proper use of the inheritance mechanism allow to reuse pre-defined user interface objects whose external behaviour is specialized for each test method. The use of the graphical interface is exemplified by means of some measurement examples.