Conceptual Web Site Modeling

Abstract

Current web site development is still dominated by technical issues. In order to enable efficient communication between developers and to provide a stable foundation for adopting new technologies, conceptual modeling of web sites is essential. Based on the state-of-the-art of conceptual modeling as implemented in current CASE environments, this paper tries to identify the “essence” of a web site and proposes an adequate conceptual model. The model is intended to capture not only hierarchical document structure and hypertext semantics, but also dynamic page generation from databases and various approaches to explicit and implicit navigation. It becomes evident that web sites can be regarded as supersets of traditional information systems, thereby requiring conceptual modeling to include various additional features. The proposed model comprises several classes of information objects, various types of associations, design rules, and quality checks. For illustration purposes, the model is applied to an existing web site. Current web site development tools are analyzed with regard to the extent to which conceptual web site modeling is supported.

Towards a Methodology for the Development of Web-Based Systems

“…Based on the discussion of related work in section 1 and the identification of conceptual components of a Web-based information system in section 2, we Figure 2: Conceptual WWW hierarchy (Source: Strauch & Winter, 2001) propose a conceptual model that is intended to cover all relevant components and their relationships, to imply some important quality rules, and to be a suitable foundation for an appropriate activity model which is presented in section 4.…”

“…there are no real modeling features. However, the product overview Figure 10: Web-based information system schema in Dreamweaver 3.0 (Source: Strauch & Winter, 2001) of SiteMill for Macintosh (ADOBE SYSTEMS Inc., 1997) claims that the tool has some modeling features like a 'site view' and an 'external reference view'.…”

“…Conceptual schema of a Web-based information system (Source: Strauch & Winter, 2001) Quality The proposed conceptual model implies the following quality controls: Within the Web-based information system: • All hierarchical relationships must link an internal information object to one or more internal information objects • All associative relationships must link an internal information object to one or more internal or external information objects • All navigational relationships must link a navigator to one or more internal or external information objects • All component relationships must link an internal information object to one or more componentsWithin the World Wide Web• All URLs referenced by associative or navigational relationships must exist…”

“…Web-based information system schema in Frontpage 2000 (Source:Strauch & Winter, 2001) Microsoft Visual Interdev 6.0…”