A SYSTEM-INDEPENDENT GRAPHICAL USER-INTERFACE FOR STATISTICAL SOFTWARE

In this paper we develop an approach for creating a graphical user interface (GUI) for an existing command driven mainframe computer program. The general principle of this approach is to create a GUI which translates user's requests into appropriate command syntax for the host computer program. This GUI serves as an intelligent front-end for the command driven program. All input and output to the host computer program are generated and received by this intelligent front-end. Since the front-end and the host computer programs are separated, this GUI program is independent of the host computer and the same GUI program can function with the host computer program under different operating systems. Such an approach does not require any modification to the existing host computer program, which provides significant benefits to software users and developers. In general, this approach can be applied to any existing command driven software. As an example, we present an implementation using the SCA Statistical System. The windows front-end to the SCA System runs on a personal computer using a native windowing environment, Microsoft Windows. The front-end communicates with the SCA System running on a mainframe or workstation through a serial communication device. This implementation demonstrates the advantage of using such an approach.