A Framework for the Simulation of Web Applications UTS Faculty of Engineering Technical Report UTS-Eng-TR-04-001

In recent years numerous Web application model languages have been developed and others improved. There has, however, been little research on how these languages may be simulated. Simulation of model languages allows early evaluation and prevents unnecessary Web code development and implementation. It can therefore potentially significantly reduce the design cycle time and cost. This paper introduces a Web application simulation model framework that was designed to be compatible with existing modeling languages. This was accomplished by specifically identifying the objectives of a simulation language and contrasting this with those of design models. The simulation model supports analysis of simulations from four key Web application perspectives (and hence the model is constructed around these perspectives) namely: presentation, navigation, functionality and content. We argue that with this approach substantial inferences about the quality of the design can be drawn from simulation of the Web application model.