Extending a Conceptual Modelling Approach to Web Application Design

Abstract

This article presents OO-HMethod, an extension of the OOMethod conceptual modelling approach to address the particulars associated with the design of web interfaces. It is based on the OO-Method class diagram, which captures the statics of the system. The design of the interface appearance and the navigation paths are driven by the user navigation requirements. To achieve its goal, OO-HMethod adds several navigation and interface constructs to the OO-Method conceptual model, which define the semantics suitable for capturing the specific functionality of web application interfaces. A new kind of diagram, the 'Navigation Access Diagram' (NAD) is introduced. All the concepts represented in the NAD are stored in a repository, and from there a functional interface is generated in an automated way. One of the main contributions of this paper is not the proposal of yet another method for web modelling but the extension of an existing conceptual modelling approach.

MDA Transformations Applied to Web Application Development

“…It contributes to fill the gap currently existing between traditional Web design models and the final implementation. In order to achieve this, WebSA defines a set of architectural models to specify the architectural viewpoint which complements current Web engineering methodologies [3,5]. Furthermore, WebSA also establishes an instance of the MDA development process [4], which allows for the integration of the different viewpoints of a Web application by means of transformations between models.…”

“…1. On the one side, the functional-perspective is given by the Web functional models provided by Web methods (see [2,3,5]). On the other side, the Subsystem Model (SM) and the Configuration Model (CM) define the software architecture of the Web Application.…”

“…This approach proposes (1) a development process based on MDA, (2) a set of architectural models and (3) a set of transformations that permit the automatic integration of these architectural models with the functional models of a Web application using the QVT-P notation. The functional models, like navigation are those proposed by any Web design method such as WebML [2], OO-H [3] or UWE [5]. Sections 2 and 3 give an overview of the WebSA development process and the UWE design method, respectively.…”

A Knowledge-Based Framework for the Rapid Development of Conversational Recommenders

“…In recent work (e.g., [7]), an even more general architecture for building different families of web applications is introduced. Furthermore, some existing modeling methods are extended in order to support the conceptual design of web applications, for instance UML using stereotypes [19] or the OO-Method [8]. The main focus of these approaches is a smooth integration of web application specific concepts into a general software production process, which enables automatic generation of parts of the code on the basis of the conceptual models.…”

“…The software framework presented in this paper illustrates a practical application where several best-practices from the field of Web Engineering (e.g., [5], [6], [7], [8]) are implemented for a specific kind of web applications, i.e., conversational recommenders. In the following sections, the main architecture, implementation details, as well as practical experiences from commercial applications of the system are described and a comparison with other approaches in the area is drawn.…”