An investigation of web-based hypermedia design support: methods and tools

Since the Internet networking was first established, the World Wide Web (or WWW) provides a new opportunity to deliver information and to communicate with others. Therefore, many organisations and industries have joined this exciting technology to take advantage of the Web. In recent years, the opportunity has arisen for other tasks to be carried out on the Web apart from delivering information. As the Web applications and documents have become larger and more complex, they have experienced many design and development problems which often lead to very high maintenance cost. To improve the quality of Websites and the structure of information, the designers need structured design methods, guidelines, and tools to assist their work. Some researchers have proposed hypermedia design methods and guidelines, which contain development cycle with formal design techniques to assist the construction of Web page designs. To overcome the design and development problems, this research is carried out by surveying currently available design methods. It shows the ways to apply these methods for developing structured Web sites. The results of this research led to identifying the design stages involved in developing Web sites using hypermedia methods. It also presents a CASE tool to provide a development environment for producing Web pages based on hypermedia design stages. This encourages Web designers to apply structured hypermedia design methods to improve the quality of design and to reduce the maintenance cost. The thesis is relevant for end-users, Web designers from organisations, institutes, and institutes for those who want to apply structured hypermedia design methods for producing their Web documents

SMIL State: an architecture and implementation for adaptive time-based web applications

In this paper we examine adaptive time-based web applications (or presentations). These are interactive presentations where time dictates which parts of the application are presented (providing the major structuring paradigm), and that require interactivity and other dynamic adaptation. We investigate the current technologies available to create such presentations and their shortcomings, and suggest a mechanism for addressing these shortcomings. This mechanism, SMIL State, can be used to add user-defined state to declarative time-based languages such as SMIL or SVG animation, thereby enabling the author to create control flows that are difficult to realize within the temporal containment model of the host languages. In addition, SMIL State can be used as a bridging mechanism between languages, enabling easy integration of external components into the web application. Finally, SMIL State enables richer expressions for content control. This paper defines SMIL State in terms of an introductory example, followed by a detailed specification of the State model. Next, the implementation of this model is discussed. We conclude with a set of potential use cases, including dynamic content adaptation and delayed insertion of custom content such as advertisements. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

Role Based Access Control as SecureUML Model in Web Applications Development with Spring Security

Tänapäeval on efektiivse äri üheks võtmeks kiire ja edukas veebirakenduste arendus. Samas, uudsed maailmas levinud nõuded eeldavad keerukat lähenemist juurdepääsukontrolli ja kasutajate rühmade koostöövõime määratlemisel. Tavapäraselt hõlmab tarkvara arenduse protsess erinevaid vastutavaid osalisi rakenduse hindamisel, plaanide koostamisel, arendusel, rakendamisel ja kasutajatoe tagamisel, mille tulemusena suureneb informatsiooni kadu ja keerukus sihtgruppide vahelises suhtluses. Arendusmeeskonnad peaksid sellise olukorra vältimiseks ja väärtõlgendustest ning turvalisuse nõuete rikkumisest tulenevate võimalike riskide leevendamiseks tarkvara arenduses kasutama vahendeid, mis võimaldavad kiiret ja täpset veebirakenduse interpreteerimist läbi mudeli. Modelleerimine aitab tunduvalt vähendada võimalikke probleeme ja tagab funktsionaalsuse vajadused arvestades soovitud rollipõhise juurdepääsukontrolli mudeliga. Antud töös pakutakse välja kontseptuaalne Eclipse IDE lisandmooduli realisatsioon, et toetada ja lihtsustada mudelil baseeruvat lähenemist veebirakenduste arendamisel kasutades Spring platvormi. Loodud lisandmoodul toetab Spring Security esitusviiside tuvastamist koos võimega visualiseerida nende üle rollipõhise juurdepääsukontrolli mudelit. Visuaalse mudeli genereerimine toimub kahe peamise astmena: Spring Security konfiguratsiooni tuvastamine ja esituse genereerimine kasutades SecureUML modelleerimise keelt. Loodud lisandmooduli kontseptsioon valideeriti juhtumiuuringutega, mis näitasid lisandmooduli sobivust tarkvara arendajate jaoks tänu integreeritud lahendusele, et tagada kiiremat arendust ja abi valitud veebirakenduse rollipõhise juurdepääsukontrolli mudelist arusaamisel.Nowadays fast and successful development of a web application is one of the keys to effective business. However, modern world requirements define the complex approach in definition of ac-cess control and user groups’ interoperability. The software development process typically in-volves different responsible members for the application assessment, planning, development, de-ployment and support, as a consequence, increasing the complexity and information losses be-tween target groups. In order to mitigate possible risks in software development misinterpretation and security violation, teams should use tools that allow fast and accurate interpretation of the web application through a model. Modelling will help with minimization of possible problems and ensure the functionality needs with respect to desired RBAC model. In order to support and simpli-fy the model-driven approach for a web application development with Spring platform, realization of a concept plugin for Eclipse IDE is proposed. This plugin supports the recognition of Spring Security notations with capability to visualize the RBAC model on top of them. The generation of visual model is achieved in two main steps: recognition of Spring Security configuration and gen-eration of representation with SecureUML modeling language. The concept of contributed plugin was validated within case studies that demonstrated the acceptance of this plugin by software de-velopers due to its integrated solution for faster development and help in understanding of RBAC model for the selected web application