Thesis full text (PDF) - Politecnico di Milano

the application domain as extended UML class diagrams translated to OWL syntax. The
development process produces also the navigational class and context models, defining
respectively the objects that may be reached by the user and their access mechanisms, both of
them mapped to the ontology in the conceptual model with the use of RQL queries. The
knowledge structure is mapped to navigable application objects, which can be manipulated by
the application according to the OOHDM methodology. The main limitation is that the use of
RQL queries requires the developer to explicitly implement them at design time.
OntoWebber [66] is another model-driven ontology-based language for Web applications. It
generates sites from ontological descriptions of various aspects of the sites structure. Like in
Hera, the design process in OntoWebber concentrates on the integration of existing
heterogeneous data sources in a single RDF(S) domain ontology stored in a data repository
together with the site’s ontological models, which express predefined aspects like content,
navigation, presentation, personalization, maintenance, and integrity constraints requirements.
These aspects are translated to the domain ontology through TRIPLE queries.
With respect to the discussed approaches, our proposal presents several advantages: it allows the
designer to work at a graphical conceptual level for the application design; it exploits standard
UML representation of components; it provides a set of patterns that simplify the design task; it
benefits from an implementation experience that exploits the well known WebML DSL and
industrial CASE tool and code generation features.
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