FRAMEWORK FOR BINDING DATA VIEWERS/DATA MANIPULATION WITH ONE TO MANY OBJECTS THROUGH INTROSPECTION

Systems and methods for programming applications with GUIs in accordance that do not require time-consuming and error-prone custom coding of GUI/internal variable synchronization routines, in general, and GUI/BO synchronization routines, in particular. An embodiment includes a plurality of classes for associating and synchronizing GUI components and BO attributes. The classes include: an inspector class, a selection class and a plurality of editor classes. The inspector class includes methods and data structures that enable a client application to bind a set of GUI components to the attributes of at least one business object. As a first step in associating and synchronizing GUI components and BO attributes a client application constructs an instance of the inspector class. The client application then passes the inspector instance a selection class instance that includes the business object(s) whose properties are to be synchronized with the GUI components. The client application also passes the inspector instance a mapping between BO attributes and GUI components. The present invention can be implemented in the Java.TM. programming language or any other object-oriented language. When the BOs are implemented as JavaBeans.TM. Objects, their properties are discovered using the JavaBeans.TM. property of introspection.