A prototype tool for the automatic generation of adaptive websites

This paper presents AWAC, a prototype CAWE tool for the automatic generation of adaptive Web applications based on the A-OOH methodology. A-OOH (Adaptive OO-H) is an extension of the OO-H approach to support the modeling of personalized Websites. A-OOH allows modeling the content, structure, presentation and personalization of a Web Application. The AWAC tool takes the A-OOH design models of the adaptive Website to generate as an input. Once generated, the adaptive Website also contains two modules for managing the personalization which, at runtime, analyze the user browsing events and adapt the Website according to the personalization rule(s) triggered. These personalization rules are specified in an independent file so they can be updated without modifying the rest of the application logic

The treatment of navigation in web engineering

This paper aims at giving a global vision of the most popular web engineering approach. Web systems have woken up a high interest in companies and in the research community in the last years. Thus, techniques and methods are being proposed in order to offer a suitable framework to deal with the special characteristics of the web. For these reasons, some years ago a new line in the software engineering appeared. This line, then named web engineering, has grown in the last years, proving that web systems have special characteristics that require a special treatment. One of the most treated characteristic is the navigation. Navigation is a critical aspect in web systems and its suitable development in the life cycle is a basic need to guarantee the project quality. This survey shows how navigation is treated in 15 web proposals, which are the most referenced ones, and it analyses the available techniques, models and the possible gaps in the treatment

Metamodeling or profiling: a practical case in the web engineering domain

Model Driven Development (MDD) provides several choices for the definition of modeling languages. The definition of a complete metamodel and the customization of a given metamodel using profiles are common approaches. In our opinion neither of these approaches is better than the other, and the choice should depend on the characteristics of each project. This paper describes our experiences defining a graphical notation for the characterization of web navigational maps based on a MOF metamodel and a UML profile. The advantages and drawbacks of both approaches are examined, as well as the solution selected for our project.Presentado en el VIII Workshop Ingeniería de Software (WIS)Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Metamodeling or profiling: a practical case in the web engineering domain

Model Driven Development (MDD) provides several choices for the definition of modeling languages. The definition of a complete metamodel and the customization of a given metamodel using profiles are common approaches. In our opinion neither of these approaches is better than the other, and the choice should depend on the characteristics of each project. This paper describes our experiences defining a graphical notation for the characterization of web navigational maps based on a MOF metamodel and a UML profile. The advantages and drawbacks of both approaches are examined, as well as the solution selected for our project.Presentado en el VIII Workshop Ingeniería de Software (WIS)Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

A web application user interface specification language based on statecharts

The Internet today has a phenomenal reach---right into the homes of a vast audience worldwide. Some organisations (and individuals) see this medium as a good opportunity for extending the reach of their computer systems. One popular approach used for such endeavours is to run an application on a server, using web technology for displaying its user interface (UI) remotely. Developing such a web-based UI can be quite tedious---it is a concurrent, distributed program which has to run in a hostile environment. Furthermore, the platform on which it is implemented (the web) was not originally intended for such usage. A web framework is a collection of software components which provides its users with support for developing and executing web-based UIs. In part, web frameworks can be seen as being analogous to interpreters: given a specification of a UI using a specification technique dictated by the framework, server components of the framework can present the UI using web technology. Topics related to web frameworks are scarce in the academic literature, but abound in industry and open discussion forums. Similarly, the designers of web frameworks seldom found their work on existing theory in the literature. This study is an attempt to bridge this gap. It is focused on two aspects of web frameworks: the specification technique a framework mandates, and how such a specification can subsequently be used to present a UI via web technology. As part of this study, a survey was conducted of 80 open source web frameworks. Based on the survey, a partial overview of the domain of web frameworks is given, covering what is seen as being typically required of a web framework and covering specification techniques that are used by existing frameworks. Two taxonomies are proposed of the strategies web frameworks use for specifying two aspects of web UIs. Using the web as platform implies adherence to certain (intended) architectural constraints. Web framework designers often strain against these constraints. However, another point of view is to recognise that the success of the web platform is made possible precisely because of its intended architecture. (And the success of the web is surely the principal motivation for using it for remote UIs in the first place.) With the bias of this viewpoint, a specification technique is proposed for web-based UIs. This technique is based on the well-known formalism of statecharts, with semantics explicitly defined in terms of the intended architectural components and constraints of the web. The design of a web framework for presenting a UI so specified is also proposed (based on the theoretical background given, as well as two prototype implementations which have been developed).Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2007.Computer Scienceunrestricte

Model Driven Software Engineering for Web Applications

Model driven software engineering (MDSE) is becoming a widely accepted approach for developing complex applications and it is on its way to be one of the most promising paradigms in software engineering. MDSE advocates the use of models as the key artifacts in all phases of the development process, from analysis to design, implementation and testing. The most promising approach to model driven engineering is the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) defined by the Object Management Group (OMG). Applications are modeled at a platform independent level and are transformed to (possibly several) platform specific implementations. Model driven Web engineering (MDWE) is the application of model driven engineering to the domain of Web application development where it might be particularly helpful because of the continuous evolution of Web technologies and platforms. However, most current approaches for MDWE provide only a partial application of the MDA pattern. Further, metamodels and transformations are not always made explicit and metamodels are often too general or do not contain sufficient information for the automatic code generation. Thus, the main goal of this work is the complete application of the MDA pattern to the Web application domain from analysis to the generated implementation, with transformations playing an important role at every stage of the development process. Explicit metamodels are defined for the platform independent analysis and design and for the platform specific implementation of dynamic Web applications. Explicit transformations allow the automatic generation of executable code for a broad range of technologies. For pursuing this goal, the following approach was chosen. A metamodel is defined for the platform independent analysis and for the design of the content, navigation, process and presentation concerns of Web applications as a conservative extension of the UML (Unified Modeling Language) metamodel, together with a cor-responding UML profile as notation. OCL constraints ensure the well-formedness of models and are checked by transformations. Transformations implement the systematic evolution of analysis and design models. A generic platform for Web applications built on an open-source Web platform and a generic runtime environment is proposed that represents a family of platforms supporting the combination of a broad range of technologies. The transformation to the platform specific models for this generic platform is decomposed along the concerns of Web applications to cope in a fine-grained way with technology changes. For each of the concerns a metamodel for the corresponding technology is defined together with the corresponding transformations from the platform independent design models. The resulting models are serialized to code by means of serialization transformations

A web engineering approach for the development of business process-driven web applications

Actualmente, la World Wide Web se ha convertido en la plataforma más común para llevar a cabo el desarrollo de aplicaciones corporativas. Estas aplicaciones reciben el nombre de aplicaciones Web y entre otras funciones, deben de dar soporte a los Procesos de Negocio (PN) definidos por las corporaciones. Esta tesis presenta un método de Ingeniería Web que permite el modelado y la construcción sistemática de aplicaciones Web que soportan la ejecución de PN. En este trabajo se conciben los PN desde un punto de vista más amplio que el abordado por otros métodos de Ingeniería Web. El tipo de PN abordados incluye tanto procesos cortos como largos. A grosso modo, esta concepción más amplia permite considerar procesos que involucran diferentes participantes (personas y/o sistemas) los cuales cooperan para llevar a cabo un objetivo particular. Además, dependiendo del tipo de proceso que se esté ejecutando (corto o largo), la interacción del usuario con el sistema deberá adaptarse a cada caso. El método presentado en esta tesis ha sido desarrollado basándose en el Desarrollo de Software Dirigido por Modelos. De esta forma, el método propone un conjunto de modelos que permiten representar los diferentes aspectos que caracterizan las aplicaciones Web que soportan la ejecución de PN. Una vez el sistema ha sido representado en los modelos correspondientes, mediante la aplicación de transformación de modelos se obtiene otros modelos (transformaciones de modelo-a-modelo) e incluso el código que representa el sistema modelado en términos de un lenguaje de implementación (transformaciones de modelo-a-texto). El método propuesto en esta tesis está soportado por una herramienta llamada BIZZY. Esta herramienta ha sido desarrollada en el entorno de Eclipse y cubre el proceso de desarrollo desde la fase de modelado hasta la generación de código. En particular, el código generado corresponde con el framework Web Tapestry (framework que genera aplicaciones Web en Java) y con WS-BPEL,Torres Bosch, MV. (2008). A web engineering approach for the development of business process-driven web applications [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/2933Palanci

Extending Conceptual Schemas with Business Process Information

The specification of business processes is becoming a more and more critical aspect for organizations. Such processes are specified as workflow models expressing the logical precedence among the different business activities (i.e., the units of work). Typically, workflow models are managed through specific subsystems, called workflow management systems, to ensure a consistent behavior of the applications with respect to the organization business process. However, for small organizations and/or simple business processes, the complexity and capabilities of these dedicated workflow engines may be overwhelming. In this paper, we therefore, advocate for a different and lightweight approach, consisting in the integration of the business process specification within the system conceptual schema. We show how a workflow-extended conceptual schema can be automatically obtained, which serves both to enforce the organization business process and to manage all its relevant domain data in a unified way. This extended model can be directly processed with current CASE tools, for instance, to generate an implementation of the system (including its business process) in any technological platform

Usability Tool Support for Model-Based Web Development

When web engineering methods are used for the development of web applications, models are created during the development process which describe the website. Using the information present in these models, it is possible to create usability tool support that is more advanced than current approaches, which do not rely on the presence of models. This dissertation presents ideas for tool support during different phases of the development, such as the implementation phase or the testing phase. For example, if a tool knows from a model that the audience of a website are teenagers, it can examine whether the words and sentences used on the website are likely to be understood by teenagers. An approach is presented to augment existing web engineering models with the additional information ("age" in this case) and to make it available to tools, e.g. via embedding it in HTML code. Two prototypes demonstrate the concepts for integrating usability tool support into web engineering