Model Transformations in the Development of Data–Intensive Web Applications

Abstract

Over the last few years, Web-based systems became commonplace. Despite the complexity and the economic significance of such applications, current practice does not always apply robust and wellunderstood principles. Model driven architecture (MDA) separates the application logic from the underlying platform technology and represents them with precise semantic models. Web application development therefore has potentially the most to gain from adopting such techniques that can offer a greater return on development time and quality factors than traditional approaches. In particular, the paper presents model-driven transformations between platform-independent (conceptual descriptions of Web applications) and platform-specific (Model-View-Controller conformant) models. The design of such transformations is documented (and possibly animated) through mathematically rigorous specifications given by means of Abstract State Machines.

Weaving concerns in model based development of data-intensive web applications

“…The main difference with respect to the work presented in this paper lies in the aspects they intend to weave together and the lack of an explicit specification of the correspondences among the models. The work outlines also automated transformations to generate platform-specific models for the J2EE, .NET or CORBA platforms similarly to the approach we defined in [21].…”

“…The main difference among them consists on the fact that the former propagate parameters from the source to the target structured content, as in the case depicted in the figure where the unique identifier of a selected professor is propagated to his/her home page. A more detailed discussion on the Webile profile can be found in [20,21].…”

“…The adoption of this specific profile is motivated by the availability (e.g. in [21]) of model-to-model transformations for generating platform-specific models for the J2EE platform. Nevertheless, the techniques are general enough and their metamodel-independence has already been validated on different domains, such as data-intensive Web applications and middlewarebased systems [7,21].…”

Software customization in model driven development of web applications

“…As shown in [7], by means of model transformations it is possible to obtain MVC compliant models of Web applications conceptually described through specialized modeling languages. In this sense, the conceptual description given in Fig.…”

TowardsWeaving Software Architecture Models

“…Recently, our experience has proven the validity of Abstract State Machines (ASMs) as a formal and flexible platform on which to base a hybrid solution for model transformations: on one hand they combine declarative and procedural features to harness the intrinsic complexity of such task [27]; on the other hand, they are mathematically rigorous and represent a formal basis to analyze and verify that transformations are property preserving (as in [7]). Furthermore, we believe that ASMs could serve also for having better insights on transformation languages in general, on their intrinsic nature and for eventually having a basis for comparative analysis among such complex objects.…”