Modelling Dynamic Personalization in Web Applications

Conceptual Modelling approaches for the web need extensions to specify dynamic personalization properties in order to design more powerful web applications. Current approaches provide techniques to support dynamic personalization, usually focused on implementation details. This article presents an extension of the OO-H conceptual modelling approach to address the particulars associated with the design and specification of dynamic personalization. We describe how conventional navigation and presentation diagrams are influenced by personalization properties. In order to model the variable part of the interface logic OO-H has a personalization architecture that leans on a rule engine. Rules are defined based on a User Model and a Reference Model. OO-H provides two type of rules: acquisition rules, in which the needed information is collected, and personalization rules that are applied to the navigation and presentation level, and reflected in their corresponding conceptual views. In this way, the interface logic of a web application is viewed as a composition of a stable and a variable part, where the variable part (expressed in XML) is interpreted at execution time. The main benefit is that this specification can be modified without recompile the rest of the application modules.