The Conference Review System With WSDM

2003

The Web information space is rapidly growing in the size and the diversity of both its data and its audience. A consequence is that Web Information Systems (WIS) in many applications replace existing traditional (not Web based) information systems. Hence, the complexity of (WIS) increases and the need for an effective design process ask for a rigorous and systematic design approach. Since the nature of WIS differs from the nature of traditional information systems has some essential differences, there is a strong demand for design methodologies specifically oriented towards WIS design. We argue that besides the quality of the navigation that is typical for Web (hypermedia) data also the adaptation of the presented content is a desired feature of a modern WIS. In this paper we briefly describe the navigation and adaptation design in selected WIS design methodologies, RMM, OOHDM, UWE, and particulary Hera. ¢ Requirement Analysis: gathering and forming the specification of the user requirements. ¢ Conceptual Design: constructing the Conceptual Model (CM) for the domain.

Computer Networks, 2000

Designing and maintaining Web applications is one of the major challenges for the software industry of the year 2000. In this paper we present Web Modeling Language (WebML), a notation for specifying complex Web sites at the conceptual level. WebML enables the high-level description of a Web site under distinct orthogonal dimensions: its data content (structural model), the pages that compose it (composition model), the topology of links between pages (navigation model), the layout and graphic requirements for page rendering (presentation model), and the customization features for one-to-one content delivery (personalization model). All the concepts of WebML are associated with a graphic notation and a textual XML syntax. WebML specifications are independent of both the client-side language used for delivering the application to users, and of the server-side platform used to bind data to pages, but they can be effectively used to produce a site implementation in a specific technological setting. WebML guarantees a model-driven approach to Web site development, which is a key factor for defining a novel generation of CASE tools for the construction of complex sites, supporting advanced features like multi-device access, personalization, and evolution management. The WebML language and its accompanying design method are fully implemented in a pre-competitive Web design tool suite, called ToriiSoft. Navigation Model: it expresses how pages and content units are linked to form the hypertext. Links are either non-contextual, when they connect semantically independent pages (e.g., the page of an artist to the home page of the site), or contextual, when the content of the destination unit of the link depends on the content of the source unit. For example, the page showing an artist's data is linked by a contextual link to the page showing the index of reviews of that specific artist. Contextual links are based on the structure schema, because they connect content units whose underlying entities are associated by relationships in the structure schema. 3. Presentation Model: it expresses the layout and graphic appearance of pages, independently of the output device and of the rendition language, by means of an abstract XML syntax. Presentation specifications are either page-specific or generic. In the former case they dictate the presentation of a specific page and include explicit references to page content (e.g., they dictate the layout and the graphic appearance of the title and cover data of albums); in the latter, they are based on predefined models independent of the specific content of the page and include references to generic content elements (for instance, they dictate the layout and graphic appearance of all attributes of a generic object included in the page). 4. Personalization Model: users and user groups are explicitly modeled in the structure schema in the form of predefined entities called User and Group. The features of these entities can be used for storing groupspecific or individual content, like shopping suggestions, list of favorites, and resources for graphic customization. Then, OQL-like declarative expressions can be added to the structure schema, which define derived content based on the profile data stored in the User and Group entities. This personalized content can be used both in the composition of units or in the definition of presentation specifications. Moreover, high-level business rules, written using a simple XML syntax, can be defined for reacting to site-related events, like user clicks and content updates. Business rules typically produce new user-related information (e.g., shopping histories) or update the site content (e.g., inserting new offers matching users' preferences). Queries and business rules provide two alternative paradigms (a declarative and a procedural one) for effectively expressing and managing personalization requirements.

The rapid changes of information technology led to the proliferation of Web-based Information Systems (WIS). There has been already some research on the general model for analysis and design of WIS. This paper attempts to define a comprehensive framework for integrating the various viewpoints of model for WIS. Several components that compose of a WIS as analyzing and designing element are investigated and described as modeling element and enabling tool for creating consistent and integrated system. The major modeling components are: the Web site, semi structured document, business processes, element of knowledge management, the enterprise and information architecture, and autonomous software components providing functional services. These elements are integrated into a unified framework exploiting partly the object-oriented paradigm and partly other approaches for information system modeling. The outlined WIS model incorporates the most recent approaches for various paradigms of traditional information systems analysis and the most modern different approaches of WIS. The research result would be useful both theoretically and practically as it could present a comprehensive model for WIS assisting our understanding of properties of WIS and supporting, at the same time, a framework for being able to formulate a practical development method for achievement of WIS by organizations making the most of Web.

The Web is flooded with data. However, there is a huge gap between data and information. Collecting, normalization, and analyzation are required steps to transform data into information. However, HTML is document-centric rather than data-centric. Extracting large amounts of data from the Web is a time consuming and tedious task, but information technologies can only provide little help, especially when users lack of domain knowledge. In this research, the conceptual design of a Web information extraction and data analysis framework is proposed. The framework helps data analysts go through the required steps. Furthermore, our design is suitable for inexperienced beginners in data analyzation field since some assistant modules have been considered.

Proceedings Ninth International Workshop on Software Specification and Design, 1998

The World Wide Web (WWW) has become "the" global infrastructure for delivering information and services. The demands and expectations of information providers and consumers are pushing WWW technology towards higher-level quality of presentation, including active contents and improved usability of the hypermedia distributed infrastructure. This technological evolution, however, is not supported by adequate Web design methodologies. Web site development is usually carried out without following a well-defined process and lacks suitable tool support. In addition, Web technologies are quite powerful but rather low-level and their semantics is often left largely unspecified. As a consequence, understanding the conceptual structure of a complex Web site and managing its evolution are complex and difficult tasks. The approach we advocate here is based on sound software engineering principles. The Web site development process goes through requirements analysis, design, and implementation in a high-level language. We define an object-oriented modeling framework, called WOOM, which provides constructs and abstractions for a high-level implementation of a Web site. An important feature of WOOM is that it clearly separates the data that are presented through the site from the context in which the user accesses such data. This feature not only enhances separation of concerns in the design stage, but also favors its subsequent evolution. The paper provides a view of the approach and of its current prototype implementation.

Iadis, 2002

We present a framework for modeling and generating web sites that effectively separates content from representation. This model includes generic documents, called "eidox" and a multiverse of views over the documents that can be used to generate a consistent navigation in a web site. We also introduce a content management and digital publishing software suite that currently implements this model.

The rapid changes of information technology led to the proliferation of Web-based Information Systems (WIS). There has been already some research on the general model for analysis and design of WIS. This paper attempts to define a comprehensive framework for integrating the various viewpoints of model for WIS. Several components that compose of a WIS as analyzing and designing element are investigated and described as modeling element and enabling tool for creating consistent and integrated system. The major modeling components are: the Web site, semi structured document, business processes, element of knowledge management, the enterprise and information architecture, and autonomous software components providing functional services. These elements are integrated into a unified framework exploiting partly the object-oriented paradigm and partly other approaches for information system modeling. The outlined WIS model incorporates the most recent approaches for various paradigms of traditional information systems analysis and the most modern different approaches of WIS. The research result would be useful both theoretically and practically as it could present a comprehensive model for WIS assisting our understanding of properties of WIS and supporting, at the same time, a framework for being able to formulate a practical development method for achievement of WIS by organizations making the most of Web.

1st Workshop on Web-oriented Software Technology, 2001

WebML is a visual language for modelling data intensive Web sites, conceived to facilitate the implementation of a novel generation of CASE tools capable of automating the most repetitive tasks of site construction [CFB00]. WebML has been proposed in the context of the research on semantic models and tools for the Web, which also includes the works reported in [GPS93, SR95, ISB95, FP98, AMM98]. All approaches insist on the relevance of semantic modeling of Web applications, thereby raising the level of abstraction of specifications.

2000

The main objective of this paper is to survey, in a schematic and generic way, the major modelsand approaches concerning the construction and execution of Web information systems. Basically we found three different approaches: server-centric, client-centric and distributedinfrastructure-centric applications. We discuss the major strengths and weaknesses of thecurrent Web technology, in this context, and we depict what models and technology of thedistributed and dynamic information systems should exist in a near future ...

Internet information services are developed everywhere. Such services include content generation and functionality support that have to be modeled in a consistent way. Here, we show how concepts of conceptual modeling can be used for systematic development of Internet sites. We give an introduction into our methodology of modeling Internet applications resulting in the Cottbus Internet site development language (SiteLang). The language has an operational semantics based on entityrelationship structuring and abstract state machines. It allows specification of entire Web sites, i.e., of structuring, behavior, information support, and of the interaction and story space. The methodology supports applications in different environments, e.g., Internet Web sites, WAP technology, or TV channels.