Visual programming is the key to enable the non-expert user to build new functionality by combining existing modules. This is enabled by robust and generic modules and a rather simple data flow. The visualization toolkit offered by VISTA is hence ideally suited for being driven by visual programming.
But also the definition of simulation task flows can be effectively supported. Although typical task flows may contain lot splits (parameter variations for processing steps) and optimization loops, this task level complexity has no impact on the data level properties and does not limit the applicability of simulators.
One may thus expect that a general-purpose visual programming editor will be useful for both the visualization and for simulation task definition. When combined with the Tool Abstraction Concept, one may even expect that the non-expert user will once be put into a position to create intuitively applications from general module libraries. Investigations on this subjects have already been started.