Re-engineering Legacy Web Applications into Rich Internet Applications

Abstract

Abstract. There is a current trend in the industry to migrate its traditional Web applications to Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). To face this migration, traditional Web methodologies are being extended with new RIA modeling primitives. However, this re-engineering process is being figured out in an adhoc manner by introducing directly these new features in the models, crosscutting the old functionality and compromising the readability, reusability and maintainability of the whole system. With the aim of performing this reengineering process more systematic and less error prone we propose in this paper an approach based on separation of concerns applied to the specific case of WebML.

Modernization of Legacy Web Applications into Rich Internet Applications

“…WebRatio for WebML [1], would assist the engineer in the modernization process or future maintenance activities. -A repository of patterns could be used to leverage the stored know-how on system refinement [17], and to detect potential problems generated during the modernization process. -A code generation engine that appears as a fundamental requirement for the forward engineering stage of the modernization process.…”

“…All these approaches are closely related to the reverse engineering phase of the modernization process presented here. [19]and [17] propose approaches to systematically incorporate RIA features into legacy WAs. However, contrary to the work presented here, these approaches are applied to legacy WAs that were developed by using MDD techniques and methodologies.…”

Model Driven Extraction of the Navigational Concern of Legacy Web Applications

“…We apply model driven techniques to restructure and to evolve the conceptual models of the WA into conceptual models of its RIA counterpart. In [13] we introduced an approach based on model weaving and RIA patterns.…”

“…This way, introducing RIA features in legacy WA developed using models becomes a feasible task as it has been shown in [15] [13]. However, during the last decade, widespread language-specific Web frameworks (e.g.…”

Extracting Navigational Models from Struts-Based Web Applications

“…In this context, Model Driven Web Engineering (MDWE) approaches [13] have been extended with new modeling primitives to obtain the benefits provided by RIA features [5] [9]. This way, introducing RIA features in legacy WA developed using models becomes a feasible task as it has been shown in [14] [12]. However, during the last decade, widespread language-specific Web frameworks (e.g.…”