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Scaffolding Relational Schemas and APIs from Content in Web Mockups

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Conceptual Modeling (ER 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 10650))

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Abstract

Web developers often use an interface-driven design process where mockups are gradually refined before being implemented using a platform or framework. We propose a tool, DataMockups, that supports the creation of digital mockups and then generates a relational schema automatically based on sample content and some assumptions on its structure. This aims at reducing development effort, and the database knowledge required by developers. Sample content may be entered manually or automatically using data extracted from similar existing websites. A relational schema is inferred from the data content, and then translated to an SQL database definition before generating a server-side API. To support schema evolution, the generated API provides schema abstractions that offer robustness to future schema modifications. We report on a case study for the schema inference and a performance evaluation of the data detection algorithm.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://protostrap.ch/.

  2. 2.

    https://balsamiq.com/.

  3. 3.

    https://gomockingbird.com/.

  4. 4.

    http://harthur.github.io/clusterfck/.

  5. 5.

    https://github.com/hoonto/jqgram.

  6. 6.

    http://dev.globis.ethz.ch/datamockups/DataMockups_casestudy.zip.

  7. 7.

    http://www.foodcase.ethz.ch/index_EN.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Loris Diana for his work on the realisation of the DB-API-Generator.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich, 8092, Zurich, Switzerland

    Alfonso Murolo, Sybil Ehrensberger, Zera Asani & Moira C. Norrie

Authors
  1. Alfonso Murolo
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  2. Sybil Ehrensberger
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  3. Zera Asani
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  4. Moira C. Norrie
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alfonso Murolo .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria

    Heinrich C. Mayr

  2. Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bozen-Bolzano, Italy

    Giancarlo Guizzardi

  3. Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

    Hui Ma

  4. Valencia University of Technology, Valencia, Spain

    Oscar Pastor

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Murolo, A., Ehrensberger, S., Asani, Z., Norrie, M.C. (2017). Scaffolding Relational Schemas and APIs from Content in Web Mockups. In: Mayr, H., Guizzardi, G., Ma, H., Pastor, O. (eds) Conceptual Modeling. ER 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10650. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69904-2_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69904-2_12

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-69904-2

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