Web Engineering Author: Mr.

Chetan Mahajan

Chapter 1: An Introduction to Web Engineering

1.1 What is web engineering? Web Engineering is the application of systematic and quantifiable approaches (concepts, methods, techniques, tools) to cost-effective requirements analysis, design, implementation, testing, operation, and maintenance of high-quality Web applications. Web Engineering is also the scientific discipline concerned with the study of these approaches. 1.2 Motivation: Originally the Web was designed as a purely informational medium; it is now increasingly evolving into an application medium. Web applications today are full-fledged, complex software systems providing interactive, data intensive, and customizable services accessible through different devices; they provide a facility for the realization of user transactions and usually store data in an underlying database The development of Web applications is often seen as a one-time event, it is often spontaneous, usually based on the knowledge, experiences, and development practices of individual developers, limited to reuse in the sense of the Copy & Paste paradigm, and ultimately characterized by inadequate documentation of design decisions. The applications developed are often heavily technology dependent and error prone, characterized by a lack of performance, reliability, and scalability, userfriendliness, and therefore also acceptance The strong interlinking of Web applications additionally increases the danger of problems spreading from one application to the other. The reasons for this situation are: o Document-centric approach o The assumed simplicity of Web applications development o Know-how from relevant disciplines cannot be applied or is not used The current practice in Web application development and the increasing complexity and relevance of Web applications for many areas of our society. The basic principles of Web Engineering can, however, be described similarly to those of Software Engineering as: o Clearly defined goals and requirements o Systematic development of a Web application in phases o Careful planning of these phases o Continuous audit of the entire development process. Web Engineering makes it possible to plan and iterate development processes and thus also facilitates the continuous evolution of Web applications.

Chapter 1: An Introduction to Web Engineering Author: Mr. Chetan Mahajan

1.3 Categories of Web application: What is a web application? A Web application is a software system based on technologies and standards of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that provides Web specific resources such as content and services through a user interface, the Web browser.

Fig.: Categories of Web Engineering Fig. identifies different categories of Web applications depending on their development history and their degree of complexity and gives examples. Document centric Web sites are the precursor to Web applications. Web pages are stored on a Web server as ready-made, i.e. static, HTML documents and sent to the Web client in response to a request. The main benefits are the simplicity and stability of such Web sites and the short response time, as the pages are already stored on the Web server. Static homepages, webcasts, and simple web presences for small businesses belong in this category. Transactional Web applications were created to provide more interactivity, giving the user the possibility of not only interacting with the application in a read-only manner, but also by performing updates on the underlying content. The prerequisite for this are database systems that allow efficient and consistent handling of the increasing amount of content in Web applications and offer the possibility of structured queries. Online banking, online shopping, and booking systems belong in this category. Workflow-based Web applications allow the handling of workflows within or between different companies, public authorities, and private users. A driving force for this is the availability of appropriate Web services to guarantee interoperability. The complexity of the services in question, the autonomy of the participating companies and the necessity for the workflows to be robust and flexible are the main challenges. Examples for this category are Business-to2

Web Engineering Author: Mr. Chetan Mahajan

Business solutions (B2B solutions) in e-commerce, e-government applications in the area of public administration, or Web-based support of patient workflows in the health sector. Workflow-based Web applications require a certain structuring of the automated processes and operations Collaborative Web applications are employed especially for cooperation purposes in unstructured operations (groupware). There the need for communication between the cooperating users is particularly high. Collaborative Web applications support shared information and workspaces in order to generate, edit, and manage shared information. Social Web applications are those applications where people provide their identity to a (small) community of others with similar interests. Weblogs or collaborative filtering systems such as (http://www.facebook.com) for instance, which serve the purpose of not only finding related objects of interest but also finding people with similar interests, belong to that category of applications. Portal-oriented Web applications provide a single point of access to separate, potentially heterogeneous sources of information and services. Various specialized portals such as business portals, marketplace portals in the form of online shopping malls, and community portals. Business portals give employees and/or business partners focused access to different sources of information and services through an intranet or extranet. Marketplace portals are divided into horizontal and vertical market places. Horizontal marketplaces operate on the business-to-consumer market offering consumer goods directly to the general public, and in businessto-business, selling their products to companies from other sectors. Vertical marketplaces consist of companies from a single sector, e.g. suppliers on one side and manufacturing companies on the other. Ubiquitous Web applications provide customized services anytime anywhere and for any device, thus facilitating ubiquitous access. Ubiquitous Web applications provide customized services anytime anywhere and for any device, thus facilitating ubiquitous access. An example of this would be displaying the menu of the day on the mobile devices of all users entering a restaurant between 11 am and 2 pm. The goal of the Semantic Web is to present information on the Web not merely for humans, but also in a machine readable form. This would facilitate knowledge management on the Web, in particular the linking and reuse of knowledge (content syndication), as well as locating new relevant knowledge, e.g. by means of recommender systems.

Chapter 1: An Introduction to Web Engineering Author: Mr. Chetan Mahajan

1.4 Characteristics of Web applications.

Fig. Dimensions according to ISO/IEC 9126-1 for the categorization of characteristics of Web applications. Fig. gives an overview of these characteristics and arranges them along the three dimensions: product, usage, and development with their evolution as an encompassing dimension. 1.4.1 Product-related Characteristics: Content: Document-centric character and multimodality Quality demands Hypertext: Basic elements of hypertext models are nodes, links and anchors. The essential feature of the hypertext paradigm is the non-linearity of content production by the authors and of content reception by the users together with the potential problems of disorientation and cognitive overload. Non-linearity Disorientation and cognitive overload Presentation: Presentation Self-explanation

Web Engineering Author: Mr. Chetan Mahajan

1.4.2 Usage-related Characteristics: Because of the fundamental significance of adjustment to contexts, usagerelated characteristics are divided into three groups: social context, technical context, and natural context.

Social Context: Users Spontaneity: Users can visit a Web application whenever they want and leave it again possibly for a competitors site. Multiculturality: Web applications are developed for different user groups. Technical Context: Network and Devices: Quality of service: Technically, Web applications are based on the client/server principle. The characteristics of the transmission medium, such as bandwidth, reliability, and varying stability of the connection are independent factors that must be considered when developing a Web application to guarantee appropriate quality of service. Multi-platform delivery: Web applications usually offer services not only to a specific type of device, but rather any, increasingly mobile, devices with very different specifications. The large number of different browser versions is also a challenge, as they have different functionalities and restrictions. Natural Context: Location and Time: Globality: The location from which a Web application is accessed, e.g. the geographical position, is important for the internationalization of Web applications regarding regional, cultural and linguistic differences. Location-awareness imposes further difficulties for the testing of Web applications as it is often hard to simulate changing locations and/or test all possible locations Availability: The instant delivery mechanism inherent in the very nature of the Web makes the application immediately available. 1.4.3 Development-related Characteristics: The development of Web applications is characterized by the necessary resources, such as the development team and the technical infrastructure, the development process itself, and the necessary integration of already existing solutions. The Development Team: Multidisciplinarity: Web applications can be characterized as a combination of print publishing and software development, marketing and computing, and art and technology Young average age: Web application developers are on average significantly younger and thus less experienced than traditional software developers.

Chapter 1: An Introduction to Web Engineering Author: Mr. Chetan Mahajan

Community development: The development of open source software freely available on the Web and its integration in real applications is a very recent phenomenon. Technical Infrastructure: Inhomogeneity: The development of Web applications depends on two external components: server and browser. Immaturity: Because of the increasing time-to-market pressure, components used in Web applications are often immature, i.e. they either have bugs or lack the desired functionality. Process Flexibility: In Web application development it is impossible to adhere to a rigid, predefined project plan. It is vital to react flexibly to changing conditions. Parallelism: Due to the necessity for short development times and the fact that Web applications can often be split up into autonomous components (e.g. authentication, search function, news ticker, etc.), many Web applications are developed in parallel by various subgroups of the development team. Integration Internal integration: Frequently, Web applications have to be integrated with existing legacy systems when existing content, e.g. product catalogues, are to be made available through a Web application. External integration: In addition to internal integration, the integration of content and services of external Web applications is a special characteristic of Web applications. 1.5 Evolution of Web engineering: The need for evolution can be argued for with the continuous change of requirements and conditions, the competitive pressure, and the general fast pace of development. Continuous change: Web applications change rapidly and are therefore subject to permanent evolution due to constantly changing requirements or conditions. The reasons behind continuous changes are: Users want the newest Web hype. Used tools are also technology-driven. Competitive pressure: The extremely high competitive pressure on the Web, the time-to market pressure and the necessity for a Web presence increase the need for shorter product lifecycles short development cycles Fast pace: The extreme time pressure on Web application development is due to the rapid change on the Web and the accordingly short lifespan of Web applications or their frequency of updates. either you are fast or irrelevant