WWW/Internet - Portal do Software Público Brasileiro

IADIS International Conference WWW/Internet 2010WebFDM: A WEB APPLICATION FLEXIBLEDEVELOPMENT METHODOLOGYAdelaide BianchiniComputer Science and Information Technology Department, Universidad Simón BolívarValle de Sartenejas, Caracas 1080. Venezuela. abianc@usb.veABSTRACTOver the past decade several methodologies have been proposed to improve the quality of Web application development.There are proposals that provide techniques and mechanisms to specify the product model, but leave apart some aspectsabout the process development model for shaping the development and the generation of products based on differentsituations. Besides, some industry and academic methods are not flexible enough to react according to the differentsituations and conditions of the projects to be. These conditions may include application type and complexity, models tobe created, development team characteristics, technological resources and other requirements. This paper presentsWebFDM, a flexible method for the development of web applications in conjunction with a Case Tool - COHESION. Thisflexible method will be aligned to Situational Method Engineering principles and Web Engineering foundations. As aresult of this research, we will obtain a methodology able to tailor for project conditions and an instance of the COHESIONCase Tool, configured according to the methodology.KEYWORDSWeb application development, Web Engineering, Situational Method Engineering.1. INTRODUCTIONThe complexity of Web applications has grown significantly: from static systems (Web sites) oriented toinformation content dissemination, to dynamic systems like online transactions, e-banking, e-commerceapplications, etc. Over the past decade several methodologies have been proposed to improve the quality ofWeb application development, such as OOHDM (Schwabe and Rossi, 1995), OOWS (Pastor et al., 2003),WebML (Ceri et al., 2000) and UWE (Koch and Kraus, 2002). In fact, considerable attention has been givento Web Engineering, a discipline that provides a systematic and disciplined approach for developing,documenting and maintaining Web applications.However there are methods that can be considered generic, thus they are used in any kind of Webapplication, different domains and in diverse situations. In practice, a rigid or generic method does not fitwell for every Web Application domain (Vlaanderen et al., 2008). There is a common agreement about thesteps or phases that methods in Web Engineering follow, because all of them establish a typical process: fromrequirements elicitation to implementation, and for each phase they propose the use of different techniquesand procedures. There is, also, an agreement about the products generated and the process to be followed, butthey prescribe complex tasks rather than broad guidelines (Selmi et al., 2008). For example, a veryexhaustive requirement elicitation phase may be unnecessary in small-size Web applications, or with lowlevel of complexity.Some proposals leave apart aspects about the process development model for shaping the developmentand the generation of products based on different situations. A situation is the combination of circumstancesat a given moment, possibly in a given organization. A situation affects the way of working and the producttypes to be delivered, and can be a combination of different domain, specific type of web application,complexity level of the application, capacities of the working team, times and costs related to thedevelopment, and other characteristics. In each new development, the designers have to adapt or extend, insome way, the method to support the new Web project (Vlaanderen et al., 2008).427