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Towards the Engineering of Commercial Webbased Applications

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Commercial Web-based Applications and their maintenance problems ... New Web Metrics, e.g. Bray's html 'sincerity' Both static and dynamic measures required ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Towards the Engineering of Commercial Webbased Applications


1
Towards the Engineering of Commercial Web-based
Applications
  • Cornelia Boldyreff
  • Distributed Systems Engineering Group,
  • RISE, University of Durham, UK
  • www.dur.ac.uk/cornelia.boldyreff

2
Outline
  • Web Site Development and Maintenance
  • Web Metrics and Web Site Evolution
  • Commercial Web-based Applications and their
    maintenance problems
  • Web Processes and Quality Issues
  • Web Site Engineering

3
Web Site Development and Maintenance
  • Recognition of potential Web maintenance problem
    and very interesting case of software evolution
  • Key paper - Measuring Readability and
    Maintainability of Hyperdocuments, Hatzimanikatis
    et al, JSM, 1995
  • Possibility of working with Richard West and
    colleagues managing UK government Web sites

4
Initial Findings
  • Uneven, largely poor, quality of authorship
  • badly structured documents
  • difficulty in navigating hyperdocuments
  • hypertext structures expand exponentially with
    continuous linking of nodes
  • lack of tools for managing Web development and
    maintenance

5
Further Findings
  • hyperdocuments on the WWW are often distributed
    and therefore maintained by several
    authors/maintainers
  • maintenance of WWW documents relies on the error
    logs of each server, complaints from users,
    periodic checks by owners
  • no general consensus of opinion, or standards, on
    what constitutes a good hyperdocument therefore
    assessment is difficult

6
Key Results
  • Analysis and Assessment of Web documents
  • Requirements Studies for Web Site Development and
    Management Support
  • Workbench developed - see www.dur.ac.uk/cornelia.b
    oldyreff/workbench

7
Determining Success - Web Quality Metrics
  • Apply Goal-Question-Metric
  • Metrics derived from Software Metrics, e.g.
    Complexity measures
  • Tailored Hypertext Metrics, e.g. tree impurity
  • New Web Metrics, e.g. Brays html sincerity
  • Both static and dynamic measures required

8
Software Evolution - Web Evolution
  • Inspired by Lehman classic studies in Software
    Evolution
  • Metrics here used to study changes over time
  • Aim to understand and predict the web evolution
    process
  • Support better, more controlled, web maintenance
    and management

9
Practical Application
  • Measuring and modeling the WWW allows to study
    its structure and contents, and determine quality
    factors operationally.
  • Studying Web sites and how they change over time,
    gives us insights in web design and maintenance
    processes and their possible improvement.

10
Maintenance problems associated with Commercial
Web Applications
  • Large sites incorporating legacy - both systems
    and data
  • Poor separation of data and code
  • Generated web systems hard to maintain - lack of
    tools for periodic maintenance
  • Time to launch traded off against quality
  • Lack of standards awareness and usage
  • Poor deployment of Database technology

11
Web Management and Design Processes
  • Early process models developed based on UK
    government web site management practice, and
    other more recent models derived from SE best
    practice
  • Hypermedia/Web Development methods and models -
    surveyed and classified
  • Metrics can be used here to guide research on
    process models for Web Site Engineering - as site
    evolves, so does process!

12
Web Process Improvement and CMM
  • Process models, methods, plus metrics provide the
    basis for Web Process Improvement
  • Companies need guidance on how best to improve
    their existing Web development and maintenance
    practices
  • Web Usability Engineering is a good starting
    point as it is key when a company is trying to
    attract and keep its Web site customers

13
Improving Web Engineering Processes and Products
  • Popularising the concept of web engineering -
    taking a systematic and disciplined approach to
    engineering web applications among small and
    medium enterprises - Business Informatics project
  • Working with the CACDP to migrate all their
    products and services to the WWW, helping them to
    develop a well-defined engineering approach along
    classic SPI/CMM lines - emphasis on appropriate
    and light weight processes
  • Small projects on web site re-engineering, klone
    detection, web site re-use (web-in-a-box)
  • Web-SEM project - Establishing Effective Web Site
    Evaluation metrics

14
Foundations of Web Site Engineering
  • Applying and adapting classical Software
    Engineering models, methods and tools to the
    engineering of web-based applications, e.g. web
    pages, web sites.
  • Special case of Distributed System Engineering
  • Closely related to Software Engineering but also
    recognizing important differences

15
Research Taxonomy
Software Engineering
Distributed System Engineering
Software Metrics and SPI
Human-Computer Interaction
Hypermedia (Graph) Theory
Usability Metrics
Hypertext Metrics
Open Hyper- media Design
Web-based Software Engineering
16
Towards Web Site Engineering
  • Well developed models of Web development and
    maintenance processes
  • Web Software Quality Determination
  • Models and Laws of Web-based Software Evolution
  • Support for distributed developers - Computer
    Supported Co-operative Working applied to Web
    Site Engineering

17
Key Points
  • Web developers and maintainers can learn from
    Software Engineering
  • Web metrics can help to evaluate, to describe,
    and to develop new approaches to web engineering
    processes and products
  • Software Engineering can provide a foundation for
    Web Engineering
  • Web Evolution studies provide guidance
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