An interpretative approach to the model driven development of web applications

Abstract

The increasing size and complexity of web applications has led to a situation where the traditional approach of creating and managing a set of plain HTML files is inappropriate in many cases. Consistency in structure, look and feel, and hyperlinks needs to be maintained, and support for different content formats may be required. The combination of XML Schema, XML and XSLT is able to improve this situation, but the expressive power of XML Schema is insufficient for application domains where more than a pure hierarchical structure is required.

In this work, we have chosen the XML toolchain as a guideline to construct an alternative basis for web information systems at a higher level of abstraction, namely UML class diagrams. We have identified a UML counterpart or implemented a substitute for each constituent of the XML processing chain, showing that it is possible to build a consistent UML-based system for model driven web applications.

Since our approach is based on model interpretation, a system prototype can be created by simply drawing a conceptual model in the form of a UML class diagram---a step that is required in the relevant development methodologies anyway. By making this first step immediately operational without any compilation or transformation steps, the gap between web development methodologies and actual system implementation has been narrowed significantly.