Patent ID: 7506305

Claim:
In a computing system which includes a visual design surface in the form of a user interface having a plurality of shapes that are selectable by a user, each shape being associated with one or more configuration parameters that define characteristics of software components such as relative positioning of shapes, connections between shapes and other design parameters set by a user, and wherein a user may select and arrange a plurality of the shapes when designing a software application by dragging and dropping them to a design section of the interface, a method of alerting the user to configuration errors that may arise due to inconsistencies between the configuration parameters of one or more of the selected shapes for the software design, the method comprising: the user selecting a first shape and copying it to the design section of the interface; the user selecting a second shape and copying it to the design section of the interface so that the second shape is functionally interactive with the first shape; automatically evaluating with a configuration module the configuration parameters of the first and second shapes by accessing a configuration rules database which is used by the configuration evaluation module to determine whether the configuration parameters of the two functionally interactive shapes in the proposed design violate any configuration rules; and when a configuration rule is determined to have been violated, automatically evaluating any errors using an error module that accesses a common error database which defines at least some errors as being grouped under a common error, and then returning a common error for display to the user in order to limit the number of error messages presented to the user during the design process; displaying an icon next to a at least one of the first or second selected shapes to represent at least one common configuration error associated with the shape; and in response to a user selecting the icon, displaying at least one proposed solution to the common configuration error presented.