Patent ID: 7275235

Claim:
A graphical application development environment stored on computer storage media adapted for developing a plurality of user-defined test, measurement or process control applications without recourse to data-flow-diagram means or to any object request broker, said environment comprising: (a) a graphical desktop providing user access to a plurality of selectable panels; (b) aspect handler means for creating and constructing aspect type software objects adapted to comprise functionalities, including interconnection functionalities, drawn from extant libraries of aspect functionalities; (c) at least one data source type panel for providing access to s source of streaming data, said source type panel comprising a property page accessible to a user from said desktop; (d) at least one data sink type panel for receiving streaming data from a data source type panel and for displaying a representation of such streaming data on said desktop, said data sink type panel comprising a property page accessible to a user from said desktop; and (e) at least one controlling type panel for controlling a property of another of said panels, said controlling type panel comprising a property page accessible to a user from said desktop; (f) wherein there is associated with each of said panels an aspect-type software object created and constructed by said aspect handler means that comprises attributes and properties embodied in executable code segments drawn from a store of pre-written executable code segments; and (g) wherein said attributes and properties of a said aspect-type software object may be selectively configured by a user, from the property page of the panel associated with said object, thereby to effect a user-specified interconnection between said object and an aspect-type software object associated with another of said panels through the invocation of a pre-defined and pre-written set of said executable code segments.