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A model-driven runtime environment for Web applications

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Abstract

A large part of software development these days deals with building so-called Web applications. Many of these applications are data-base-powered and exhibit a page layout and navigational structure that is close to the class structure of the entities being managed by the system. Also, there is often only limited application-specific business logic. This makes the usual three-tier architectural approach unappealing, because it results in a lot of unnecessary overhead. One possible solution to this problem is the use of model-driven architecture (MDA). A simple platform-independent domain model describing only the entity structure of interest could be transformed into a platform-specific model that incorporates a persistence mechanism and a user interface. Yet, this raises a number of additional problems caused by the one-way, multi-transformational nature of the MDA process. To cope with these problems, the authors propose the notion of a model-driven runtime (MDR) environment that is able to execute a platform-independent model for a specific purpose instead of transforming it. The paper explains the concepts of an MDR that interprets OCL-annotated class diagrams and state machines to realize Web applications. It shows the authors' implementation of the approach, the Infolayer system, which is already used by a number of applications. Experiences from these applications are described, and the approach is compared to others.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Artificial Intelligence, University of Dortmund, Germany

    Stefan Haustein

  2. Software Technology, University of Dortmund, Germany

    Joerg Pleumann

Authors
  1. Stefan Haustein
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  2. Joerg Pleumann
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Correspondence to Stefan Haustein.

Additional information

This is an extended and revised version of a paper originally presented at the UML 2003 conference in San Francisco [1]. The second author has been supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), grant 08NM098.

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Haustein, S., Pleumann, J. A model-driven runtime environment for Web applications. Softw Syst Model 4, 443–458 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-005-0093-2

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