A Tool for Model-Driven Design of Rich Internet Applications Based on AJAX

Abstract

This chapter describes how the design tool WebRatio (and its companion conceptual model WebML) have been extended to support the new requirements imposed by rich Internet applications (RIAs), that are recognized to be one of the main innovations that lead to the Web 2.0 revolution. Complex interactions such as drag and drop, dynamic resizing of visual components, graphical editing of objects, and partial page refresh are addressed by the RIA extensions of WebRatio. The chapter discusses what kinds of modelling primitives are required for specifying such patterns and how these primitives can be integrated in a CASE tool. Finally, a real industrial case is presented in which the novel RIA features are successfully applied.

A Method for Integrating Process Description and User Interface Use during Design of RIA Applications

“…only partially, and our approach. WebML does not consider event patterns; the extension of WebML for Ajax technology ( [1]) considers elements for modeling only typical Ajax events, and the treatment of such events do not consider all kinds of actions necessary for RIA applications (they do not consider operations modifying the structure/content of UIEs). Only our approach considers the construction of integrated models, without the necessity of a role having to read and understand details corresponding to the other role; OOH4RIA ( [3]) alleviates partially this problem, because it semi-automatically generates an orchestration model skeleton that needs to be completed with the definition of interaction dependencies that need the involvement of analysts, who needs to comprehend UI details.…”

“…There exist in the literature some RIA methods considering notations that treat in the same diagram both aspects of the UI, and aspects related with the interaction: WebML [1,2], notations based on state machine concepts (see OOH4RIA [3], ADVs [4]), and notations considering event condition action (ECA) rules (see RUX [5], OOWS 2.0 [6], MARIA [7]). In [8] it is said that "A general limit of ECA rules is that they do not always reflect the procedural, imperative way of thinking familiar to many people from imperative or object-oriented programming".…”