Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

This paper proposes a dialog model for web applications aiming at flexible interface generation. The basic idea is to enable the runtime system to “finalize” the dialog structure. The overall approach follows a task-oriented, user-centered development process, where models of the users’ tasks and the user-system dialog play an essential role. In our approach, these models are transferred to the run time system that allows the user to interact with the web application according to the specifications. It is based on an architecture that separates a task controller and a dialog controller, which are responsible for model execution and dialog creation. Throughout the paper, we take care of the special characteristics of web applications and show enhancements of the conceptual models and of the runtime architecture.

In this paper we present an approach for oblivious composition of Web user interfaces, particularly for volatile functionality. Our approach, which is inspired on well-known techniques for advanced separation of concerns such as aspect-oriented software design, allows to clearly separate the design of the core’s interface from the one corresponding to more volatile services, i.e. those that are offered for short periods of time. Both interfaces are oblivious from each other and can be seamlessly composed using a transformation language. We show that in this way we simplify the application’s evolution by preventing intrusive edition of the interface code. Using some illustrative examples we focus both on design and implementation issues, presenting an extension of the OOHDM design model which supports modular design of volatile functionality.

When building process-intensive web applications, developers typically spend considerable effort on the exchange of specific data entities between specific web pages and operations under specific conditions, as called for by business requirements. Since the WWW infrastructure provides only very coarse data exchange mechanisms, we introduce a notation for the design of fine-grained conditional data flows between user interface components. These specifications can be interpreted by a data flow controller that automatically provides the data entities to the specified receivers at run-time, relieving developers of the need to implement user interface data flows manually.

In this paper we present an environment for authoring Web sites through a model-based approach for user interface design. In particular, we focus on how it supports the access to remote databases and the dynamic generation of the Web pages presenting the corresponding query results. The environment is able to support development of applications implemented in many Web mark-up languages (XHTML, XHTML MP, X+V, VoiceXML) adapted to various interaction platforms (vocal, mobile, desktop,...).

This paper presents a systematic approach for the authoring of animated multimedia transitions in Web applications, following the current trend of rich interfaces. The transitions are defined based on an abstract interface specification, over which a rhetorical structure is overlaid. This structure is then rendered over concrete interfaces by applying rhetorical style sheets, which define concrete animation schemes. The resulting applications has different transition animations defined according the type of navigation being carried out, always emphasizing the semantically important information. Preliminary evaluation indicates better user experience in using these interfaces.

Web applications are complex software artefacts whose creation and maintenance is not feasible without abstractions, or models. Many special-purpose languages are used today as notations for these models. We show that can be used as modelling languages, offering substantial benefits. The precision and expressive power of functional languages helps in developing concise and maintainable specifications. We demonstrate our approach with the help of a simple example web site, using Haskell as the implementation language.

This paper addresses conceptual modeling and automatic code generation for search engine integration with data intensive Web applications. We have analyzed the similarities (and differences) between IR and database systems to extend an existing domain specific language for data-driven Web applications. The extended Web modeling language specifies the search engine’s index schemas based on the data schema of the Web application and uniquely designs the interaction between the database, the Web application, the search engine and users. We also provide an implementation of a CASE tool extension for visual modeling and code generation. Experimentation of the proposed approach has been successfully applied in the context of the COOPER project.

During the last years, Web Models have demonstrated their utility facilitating the development of Web Applications. Nowadays, Web Applications have grown in functionality and new necessities have arisen. Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) have been recently proposed as the response to these necessities. However, present Web Models seem to be incomplete for modelling the new features appearing in RIAs (high interactivity, multimedia synchronization, etc). In this paper we propose a Model Driven Method, validated by implementation, called RUX-Model that gives support to multi-level interface specifications for multi-device RIAs.

We present a requirements engineering environment which provides techniques and tools to improve communication in Requirements Engineering activities. First, a technique based on requirements ontologies is proposed to allow customers to describe their needs. This technique is supported by a tool. This tool provides analysts with structured descriptions of the customers’ needs that facilitate analysts to understand the problem to be solved. Next, both a model-to-text transformation and a model-to-model transformation are introduced to automatically obtain a textual requirements specification and a task-based requirements model respectively. The textual specification facilitates customers to validate requirements. The task-based requirements model facilitates programmers to interpret the requirements specification.

End-user development is proposed as a solution to the issues business people have when getting web applications developed. In this paper, we have presented a meta-model for web based information systems to support End-user Development. End-users can actively participate in web application development using tools to populate and instantiate the meta-model. The meta-model we created is based on three abstraction levels: Shell, Application, and Function. At Shell Level, we model aspects common to all business web applications such as navigation and access control. At Application Level, we model aspects common to specific web applications such as workflows. At Function Level, we model requirements specific to the identified use cases. Inheritance and Overriding properties of the meta-model provide a balance between ease and flexibility when developing business information systems. The key aspect that underpinned this research work is the view- “software is a medium to capture knowledge rather than a product”. Meta-model will help end-users to participate in web application development activities.