The ToolsAndMaterialsMetaphor is a metaphor that guides developers through the whole cycle of developing an interactive application. An English-language description can be found in Volume I of PloP. -- PeterMaier

The general idea is to categorize things into tools and materials. Tools inspect and manipulate materials. Materials carry business information, but are little more than dumb collections of data.

Example: In a banking environment typical materials are account and customer. Possible tools are customer-editor, money-transferrer, etc.

Materials are similar to business objects and tools create the UI of the system.

There is a set of additional metaphors with the tools and materials metaphor: container (as a special kind of material) workplace, automaton, service provider...

There is a Java-based framework called JWAM being developed at http://www.jwam.de. See: JwamFramework.

-- StefanRoock hi