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Model Driven development approaches are being adopted by the software industry due to a core set of benefits such as raising the level of abstraction and reducing coding errors. However, their underlying modelling languages tend to be quite rigid, making their evolution hard, specifically when the corresponding metamodel do not support primitives and/or functionalities required in specific business domains. In this work, we present an approach for fast evolution of the modelling language that is “self reflective”, allowing modellers to abstract new language concepts from the primitives. The main advantage of our approach is that it provides zero application downtime and automatic tool evolution. As a consequence, applications created with our approach are able to adapt quicker to the business needs than those based on traditional Web modelling languages. We compare our approach with existing modelling languages in a case study providing a proof of its ability to adapt faster than to new business needs. Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2013-46928-C3-3-R

The state of the art in location models falls short to adapt to new requirements such as composition and integration of maps. Composing and integrating maps are typical operations we want to apply when we deal with ubiquitous computing applications because they evolve permanently (i.e. to add location information of new cities, buildings, means of transport, etc.). We propose a novel approach that by abstracting some concepts such as located objects and locations, can result in more flexible models, therefore allowing dynamic composition and integration of maps. With this approach, it is also possible to combine different location representations, making applications easier to extend.

Context Agile software development approaches are currently becoming the industry standard for Web Application development. On the other hand, Model-Driven Web Engineering (MDWE) methodologies are known to improve productivity when building this kind of applications. However, current MDWE methodologies tend to ignore important aspects of Web Applications development supported by agile processes, such as constant customer feedback or early design of user interfaces. Objective In this paper we analyze the difficulties of supporting agile features in MDWE methodologies. Then, we propose an approach that eases the incorporation of well-known agile practices to MDWE. Method We propose using User Interface prototypes (usually known as mockups) as a way to start the modeling process in the context of a mixed agile-MDWE process. To assist this process, we defined a lightweight metamodel that allows modeling features over mockups, interacting with end-users and generating MDWE models. Then, we conducted a statistical evaluation of both approaches (traditional vs. mockup-based modeling). Results First we comment on how agile features can be added to MDWE processes using mockups. Then, we show by means of a quantitative study that the proposed approach is faster, less error-prone and still as complete as traditional MDWE processes. Conclusion The use of mockups to guide the MDWE process helps in the reduction of the development cycle as well as in the incorporation of agile practices in the model-driven workflow. Complete MDWE models can be built and generated by using lightweight modeling over User Interface mockups, and this process suggests being more efficient, in terms of errors and effort, than traditional modeling in MDWE. Fil: Rivero, José Matías. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de la Plata. Facultad de Informática. Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzada; Argentina Fil: Grigera, Julian. Universidad Nacional de la Plata. Facultad de Informática. Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzada; Argentina Fil: Rossi, Gustavo Héctor. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de la Plata. Facultad de Informática. Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzada; Argentina Fil: Robles Luna, Esteban. Universidad Nacional de la Plata. Facultad de Informática. Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzada; Argentina. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Gobernación. Comisión de Investigaciones Científicas; Argentina Fil: Montero, Francisco. LoUISE Research Group. Madrid; España Fil: Gaedke, Martin. Chemnitz University of Technology; Alemania

The scalability of modern Web applications has become a key aspect for any business in order to support thousands of concurrent users while reducing its computational costs. If a Web application does not scale, a few hundred users can take the application down and as a consequence cause business problems in their companies. In addition, being able to scale a Web application is not an easy task, as it involves many technical aspects such as architecture design, performance, monitoring and availability that are completely ignored by current Model Driven Web Engineering approaches. In this paper we present a model-based approach that uses runtime transformations for overcoming scalability problems in the applications derived from them. We present our approach by “scaling up” a WebML application under a stress scenario, proving that it provides a “framework” for overcoming scalability issues.

The implementation of APIs in new applications is becoming a mandatory requirement due to the increasing use of cloud-based solutions, the necessity of integration with ubiquitous applications (like Facebook or Twitter) and the need to facilitate multi-platform support from scratch in the development. However, there is still no theoretically sound process for defining APIs (starting from end-user requirements) or their productive development and evolution, which represents a complex task. Moreover, high-level solutions intended to boost productivity of API development (usually based on Model-Driven Development methodologies) are often difficult to adapt to specific use cases and requirements. In this paper we propose a methodology that allows capturing requirements related to APIs using end-user-friendly artifacts. These artifacts allow quickly generating a first running version of the API with a specific architecture, which facilitates introducing refinements in it through direct coding, as is commonly accomplished in code-based Agile processes.

Model-Driven Web Engineering (MDWE) methodologies have proven to be a mature way of developing web applications, dramatically increasing productivity during development. However, after more than a decade of evolution, the artifacts and processes used to gather requirements have not changed substantially. At the same time, the capacity of quickly adapting to emergent domain-specific requirements (a feature that became popular with the massive adoption of agile approaches) has become hard to achieve in these methodologies. In this context, in order to implement this kind of refined requirements as fast as possible, changes are usually applied directly to the generated application, losing the abstraction and its inherent productivity provided by the Model-Driven process. Another way of implementing this kind of changes is by extending the modeling language, but this implies a high effort and, again, a consequent productivity loss. In this paper we propose a model-driven development approach called MockRE that captures requirements using User Interface prototypes (mockups) that end-users can understand completely. The process and tooling presented here allows end-users to express requirements annotating the mockups with textual descriptions, and also generating a running application in the same way that MDWE environments do. Developers may later use these initial specifications placed by end-users as valuable model concepts that can be refined through direct coding in a non-intrusive way. Through this strategy, MockRE intends to make a more extensive reuse of end-users specifications throughout the whole developing process.

Web applications are hard to build not only because of technical reasons but also because they involve many different kinds of stakeholders. Involving customers in the development process is a must, not only while eliciting requirements but also considering that requirements change fast and they must be validated continuously. However, while model-driven approaches represent a step forward to reduce development time and work at a higher level of abstraction, most of them practically ignore stakeholders' involvement. Agile approaches tend to solve this problem, though they generally focus on programming rather than modeling. In this paper we present an extension to an approach that combines the best of both worlds, allowing a formal and high-level design style with constant involvement of customers, mainly in the definition of navigation, interaction and interface features. We extended it by adding transformation features that allow mapping requirement models into content and navigation ones. We provide a proof of concept in the context of the WebML design method and an empiric validation of the approach's advantages.

The increasing growth of the Web field has promoted the development of a plethora of Model-Driven Web Engineering (MDWE) approaches. These methodologies share a top-down approach: they start by modeling application content, then they define a navigational schema, and finally refine the latter to obtain presentation and rich behavior specifications. Such approach makes it difficult to acquire quick feedback from customers. Conversely, agile methods follow a non-structured, implementation-centered process building software prototypes to get immediate feedback. In this work we propose an agile approach to MDWE methodologies (called Mockup-Driven Development, or MockupDD) by inverting the development process: we start from user interface mockups that facilitate the generation of software prototypes and models, then we enrich them and apply heuristics in order to obtain software specifications at different abstraction levels. As a result, we get an agile prototype-based iterative process, with advantages of a MDWE one.

Web application development is a complex and time-consuming process that involves different stakeholders (ranging from customers to developers); these applications have some unique characteristics like navigational access to information, sophisticated interaction features, etc. However, there have been few proposals to represent those requirements that are specific to Web applications. Consequently, validation of requirements (e.g., in acceptance tests) is usually informal and as a result troublesome. To overcome these problems, we present WebSpec, a domain-specific language for specifying the most relevant and characteristic requirements of Web applications: those involving interaction and navigation. We describe WebSpec diagrams, discussing their abstraction and expressive power. With a simple though realistic example, we show how we have used WebSpec in the context of an agile Web development approach discussing several issues such as automatic test generation, management of changes in requirements, and improving the understanding of the diagrams through application simulation., Facultad de Informática, Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzada

Web application development is a complex and time consuming process that involves di erent stakeholders (ranging from customers to developers); these applications have some unique characteristics like navigational access to information, sophisticated interaction features, etc. However, there have been few proposals to represent those requirements that are speci c to Web applications. Consequently, validation of requirements (e.g. in acceptance tests) is usually informal, and as a result troublesome. To overcome these problems, this PhD Thesis proposes WebSpec, a domain speci c language for specifying the most relevant and characteristic requirements of Web applications: those involving interaction and navigation. We describe WebSpec diagrams, discussing their abstraction and expressive power. As part of this work, we have created a test driven model based approach called WebTDD that gives a good framework for the language. Using the language with this approach we have test several of its features such as automatic test generation, management of changes in requirements, and improving the understanding of the diagrams through application simulation. This PhD Thesis is composed of a set of published and submitted papers. In order to write this PhD Thesis as a collection of papers, several requirements must be taken into account as stated by the University of Alicante. With regard to the content of the PhD Thesis, it must speci cally include a summary which is devoted to the description of initial hypotheses, research objectives, and the collection of publications itself, thus justifying its coherence. It should be underlined that this summary of the PhD Thesis must also include research results and nal conclusions. This summary corresponds to part I of this PhD Thesis (chapter 1 has been written in Spanish while chapter 2 is in English). This work has been partially supported by the following projects: MANTRA (GV/2011/035) from Valencia Ministry, MANTRA (GRE09-17) from the University of Alicante and by the MESOLAP (TIN2010-14860) project from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science., Este trabajo ha sido parcialmente financiado por los siguientes proyectos: Mantra (GV/2011/035), Ministerio de Valencia, MANTRA (GRE09-17) de la Universidad de Alicante y por el MESOLAP (TIN2010-14860) proyecto del Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia de España., Facultad de Informática

The process of modeling and implementing Web applications has been successfully improved by the use of Model-Driven Web Engineering (MDWE) methodologies. However, because of their traditional process models, these methodologies delay the generation of application prototypes until all design aspects (e.g. domain and navigation) are completed. These aspects are crucial for developers but not for customers, who are interested in viewing parts of the application running as early as possible. In this paper we introduce a novel model driven approach that starts from user interface specifications, using mockups to derive concrete presentation implementations -- we call it Mockup-Driven Development or just MockupDD. Then, by using lightweight enrichments and applying heuristics over these models, we show how we obtain navigation and content specifications in the context of different MDWE methods.

Web applications evolve fast. One of the main reasons for this evolution is that new requirements emerge and change constantly. These new requirements are posed either by customers or they are the consequence of users’ feedback about the application. One of the main problems when dealing with new requirements is their consistency in relationship with the current version of the application. In this paper we present an effective approach for detecting and solving inconsistencies and conflicts in web software requirements. We first characterize the kind of inconsistencies arising in web applications requirements and then show how to isolate them using a modeldriven approach. With a set of examples we illustrate our approach.

Sketching web applications with mockup tools is a common practice that improves the process of elicitation and validation of requirements in web applications. However, mockups are used as a "quick and dirty" way of gathering requirements, thus discarded before development. As a consequence, concepts captured in them are usually lost in the manual transformation between mockups and the final user interface. In this paper we present a model-driven approach that overcomes this problem by importing mockups and then transforming them into a technology-dependent model. Development then begins from the imported version of the mockups.

Building accessible Web applications is difficult, moreover considering the fact that they are constantly evolving. To make matters more critical, an application which conforms to the well-known W3C accessibility standards is not necessarily usable for handicapped persons. In fact, the user experience, when accessing a complex Web application, using for example screen readers, tends to be far from friendly. In this paper we present an approach to safely transform Web applications into usable and accessible ones. The approach is based on an adaptation of the well-known software refactoring technique. We show how to apply accessibility refactorings to improve usability in accessible applications, and how to make the process of obtaining this "new" application cost-effective, by adapting an agile development process.

Web applications are well suited to be developed with agile methods. However, as they tend to change too fast, special care must be put in change management, both to satisfy customers and reduce developers load. In this paper we discuss how we deal with navigation and interaction requirements changes in a novel test-driven development approach for Web applications. We present it by indicating how it resembles and differs from “conventional” TDD, and showing how changes can be treated as “first class” objects, allowing us to automate the application changes and also to adaptively prune the test suite.

In the last years there has been a growing interest in agile methods and their integration into the so called "unified" approaches. In the field of Web Engineering, agile approaches such as test-driven development are appealing because of the very nature of Web applications, while model-driven approaches provide a less error-prone code derivation; however the integration of both approaches is not easy. In this paper, we present a method-independent approach to combine the agile, iterative and incremental style of test-driven development with the more formal, transformation-based model-driven Web engineering approaches. We focus not only in the development process but also in the evolution of the application, and show how tests can be transformed together with model refactoring. As a proof of concept we show an illustrative example using WebRatio, the WebML design tool.

Developing Web applications is a complex and time consuming process that involves different kind of people, ranging from customers to developers. Requirement artefacts play an important role as they are used by these people to perform their daily activities. However, state of the art in requirement management for Web applications disregards valuable features that tend to improve the development process, such as quick validation during elicitation, automatic requirement validation on the final application and useful change management support. To tackle these problems we introduce WebSpec, a requirement artefact for specifying interaction and navigation features in Web applications. We show its use through the development of an example application in the social networking area, and its implementation as an Eclipse plugin.

Model-driven web engineering approaches have become an attractive research and technology solution for Web application development. However, after 20 years of development, they have attracted little attention from the Industry due to the mismatch between technical versus research requirements. In this joint work between academia and industry, the authors present the current problems of using these approaches in scale and provide guidelines to convert them into viable industry solutions. Ministerio de ciencia e Innovación TIN2016-76956-C3-2-R Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-REDT