Conceptual Modeling of Device-Independent Web Applications

Web sites are inadequate for dealing with the software production process that involves connecting with underlying logic in a unified and systematic way. As a solution, we propose the OO-H method, an object-oriented software approach that captures relevant properties involved in modeling and implementing Web application interfaces. T he Web's characteristics—ubiquity, open standards, interlinking, easy access to information and services, and creating content easily—have created new business opportunities, such as e-commerce or online auction systems. Additionally , its characteristics have nurtured a need for both business-to-consumer and business-to-business applications inside the enterprise boundaries that take advantage of the latest techonologies. In light of ongoing technological developments, our platform strives for a lower software development and maintenance budget and a flatter learning curve. We believe that existing software engineering approaches can successfully extend to new models that specifically gather Web-related characteristics. We based our decision on three assumptions: 1. Behavior in a Web application can no longer be restricted to simple information update operations, and so it must be addressed in a rigorous way. 2. Context information and domain behavior inside Web applications should be ideally addressed with already tested object-oriented software engineering methods, as in any other distributed application. 3. In spite of the same underlying logical layer, interface appearance and behavior greatly differ between Web and traditional applications. Following the trend presented in Manolla 1 and Conallen, 2 our approach—known as the object-oriented-hypermedia (OO-H) method—looks at Web systems as unified software artifacts where structure, behavior, and presentation are all basic pieces that must be properly combined for a correct final software product. As its main contribution, the OO-H method provides a standard-based framework to capture all the relevant properties involved in the modeling and implementation of Web application interfaces. The OO-H method design process involves constructing two additional views, which complement those captured in traditional conceptual modeling approaches that comply with Unified Modeling Language (UML). The navigation view extends a class diagram with hypermedia navigation features, and the presentation view uses the different elements regarding interface appearance and behavior to model a series of interconnected template structures expressed in Extensible Markup Language (XML). An interface pattern catalog and a computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tool (see " CASE Tool " sidebar) complete our proposal. As a result, we obtain a device-independent, front-end specification. The software then automatically generates a Web interface that easily integrates with preexisting logic modules. Overview The …