WebML and WebRatio 5 - TOOLS conference, Zurich 2008

http://home.dei.polimi.it
marco.brambilla@polimi.itmarcobrambiMarcoBrambi
Web applications design and development
with WebML and WebRatio 5.0
Roberto Acerbis1, Aldo Bongio1, Marco Brambilla2, Stefano Butti1, Stefano Ceri2, Piero Fraternali2
1WebRatio, Italy2 Politecnico di Milano, Italy @ TOOLS Europe 2008, Zurich

Summary
Introduction
WebML
Trends and evolutions
WebRatio toolsuite
The WebRatio 5 edition for Eclipse
Industrial experiences
Conclusions
2

Intro
Conceptual modelsfor Web applications
Software engineering practicesapplied to the Web environment
Methodologies
CASE tools
Model verification
Code generation
Our story:
Starting from data-intensive Web applications
Moving toward service-oriented architectures, distributed business process modeling, client-side computation (RIA), semantic Web services and applications
Added value to the analyst (Function Points), the designer and the developer
Formalization of semantics, MDA representation
3

WebML (Web Modeling Language)
DSL for designing large-scale Web applications
Specifies CONTENT, HYPERTEXT, and PRESENTATION
4
Content + Hypertext + Presentation

WebML: Data model
5
ShipmentServicewhere ShipmentService.shipTonot inShipmentService.locatedIn
Self TO Europe where Self.locatedIn isa Europe
Content model + redundant data calculation
ER or UML class diagrams

WebML: Hypertext model
6
Composition modeling:pages and units
Navigation modeling:links
Execution modeling: operations, control and data (FSM formalization)

Going beyond: trends and challenges
7
Scenario:
The Web as an implementation platform of business information systems
Distributed intra- and inter-enterprise business processes
Support to new user interaction patterns
Integration of reasoning and Semantic Web features
Needs:
SOA support
Business process management
Rich Web Interfaces (RIAs)
Solution:
Modeling primitives for
Business process management
Service invocation and publishing
AJAX-based user interaction

Development step
Focus: model driven design of collaborative Web applications based on business processes, spanning multiple individuals and organizations
Proposal: a methodology for seamless flow from specifications to design, exploiting Top Down Design, Model Driven Specifications, standard models and languages. The methodology is supported by CASE tools, engines for semi-automatic generation of intermediate models, and automatic generation of running code
8

Overall picture
9

Business process modeling
10
The Workflow Model represents the business process to be executed, in terms of activities, precedence constraints, and actors in charge of executing the activities.

Process Distribution
11
Possibility of delegating one activity or a whole subprocess to different peers
Interaction between peersbased on Web services
Exchanged messagesnotify the workflow status changes to the peers

Mapping of BP to Hypertext Models
12
Automatic generation of:
SQL script
WebML skeleton (different styles)
Hypertext links behaviour
Project documentation (specifications and design)

Rich Internet Application design and code generation
RIA features covered by the language:
partial page refresh, in-page popup windows, splash screens, dynamic tooltips, animations;
drag&drop and dynamic dependencies;
text autocompletion, on-event actions, and field dependencies.
Code generation and runtime support:
mix of opensource technologies, extensively exploiting the XMLhttpRequest method.
Runtime solution: two dynamic pages for each conceptual page that interact through XMLhttpRequest for providing the rich interface features:
a back-end dynamic XML page that stores the data of interest for a specific navigation context
the front-end JSP page (including JavaScript for event management) shown to the user
13

WebRatio: The company and the product
Some customers:
Web Models
Location: Como (research and product development)
and Milano (sales and application development)
Born in 2001 as a “spin-off”
of Politecnico di Milano
Continuous cross-fertilization with Politecnico
for research and exploitation
… and 80+ universities and research centers that use the tool for free

WebML Project Design
WebRatio
Visual Identity
Running
Web Application
Data Sources
Custom Components
WebRatio Tool Overview
Model Diagram Editor based on GEF
Text Editors and component wizards for implementation of custom units
Full workspace and CVS support for versioning and multi-user development
Code Generators based on Ant, Groovy, and XSL

Model Diagram Editor
Graph Editor
Tabbed Properties
Multi-editor
Problems

Text Editor
Syntax Highlighting
Code Completion

Business Components Editor
Eclipse Forms Components
Multi-editor

Runtime Architecture and Code Generation
Smart services: created upon request, cached, and reused;
Activity log, XML parsing and access, Connection pooling
One single service class is deployed for each type of component and one runtime XML descriptor is deployed for each component

Code Generation for a simple unit:
<INDEXUNIT entity="News" name="News List"> <DISPLAYATTRIBUTE attribute="name"/> <ORDERATTRIBUTE attribute="date"/></INDEXUNIT>
<Descriptor service="com.webratio.IndexUnitService">
<OutputParameter position="1" type="String"/> <Query>
SELECT NAME
FROM NEWS_TABLE
ORDER BY DATE
</Query></Descriptor>
Runtime Architecture and Code Generation
Smart services: created upon request, cached, and reused;
Activity log, XML parsing and access, Connection pooling
One single service class is deployed for each type of component and one runtime XML descriptor is deployed for each component

Conclusions and ongoing activities
Current status:
Established DSL and tool for Web application design
Ongoing research on:
Rich Internet Applications: models and code generation
Business Process-based Applications: model transformations
Search-oriented applications: technological platforms and front end architectures
Semantic Web and SOA
DSL modernization through MDD/MDA mainstream tools
21

Thanks
22
?
Questions
Marco Brambilla
http://home.dei.polimi.it
Politecnico di Milano
marco.brambilla@polimi.itmarcobrambiMarcoBrambi

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WebML and WebRatio 5 - TOOLS conference, Zurich 2008

by Marco Brambilla on Nov 05, 2010

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WebML and WebRatio 5 - TOOLS conference, Zurich 2008 Presentation Transcript