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The RE-UWA approach to recover user centered conceptual models from Web applications

  • Special Section on Web Systems Evolution
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International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Large-scale Web Applications, especially those intended to publish contents and provide information to its users, are by nature subject to continuous and fast changes. This often means fast obsolescence of the design documentation and a lot of effort required to comprehend the application when performing maintenance and evolution tasks. This paper presents a reverse engineering approach for Web Applications enabling the semi-automatic recovery of user-centered conceptual models describing, from a user perspective, key aspects, such as the delivered contents and navigational paths. The abstracted models are formalized according to the Ubiquitous Web Applications (UWA) design methodology, but any other design method for Web Applications could be used instead. The paper describes the recovery process, a tool developed to support the process, and the results from a case study conducted to validate the approach on a set of real world Web Applications.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering, University of Sannio, Benevento, Italy

    Mario Luca Bernardi & Giuseppe Antonio Di Lucca

  2. Faculty of Economics, Tel.MA University, Rome, Italy

    Damiano Distante

Authors
  1. Mario Luca Bernardi
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  2. Giuseppe Antonio Di Lucca
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  3. Damiano Distante
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Correspondence to Mario Luca Bernardi.

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Bernardi, M.L., Di Lucca, G.A. & Distante, D. The RE-UWA approach to recover user centered conceptual models from Web applications. Int J Softw Tools Technol Transfer 11, 485–501 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-009-0126-1

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