A generative framework for development of CRUD-based Linux desktop applications

CRUD applications, i.e. applications focused on creating, reading, updating and deleting data records, have always been commonly used. Nonetheless, to the authors' knowledge there is no framework or tool targeting this class of applications in the Gnome desktop environment (using GTK+ widget toolkit). This paper describes a framework based on the model-driven development paradigm for generating CRUD desktop applications with a hierarchic layout and bindings between user interface elements from models expressed in YAML and in domain-specific languages embedded in Vala or Genie. It demonstrates a usability of the recent modern programming language - Vala - and also shows how to extend a functionality of its compiler.