Francisco Valverde

Facing the Technological Challenges of Web 2.0: A RIA Model-Driven Engineering Approach

One of the main reasons for the success of Web 2.0 is the improvement in user experience. This improvement is a consequence of the evolution from HTML User Interfaces (UI) to more usable and richer UI. The most popular Web 2.0 applications have selected the Rich Internet Application (RIA) paradigm to achieve this goal. However, the current Web Engineering methods do not provide the expressivity required to produce RIA interfaces. This work presents a RIA Metamodel to deal with the new technological challenges that have arisen with Web 2.0 development. This metamodel supports two main perspectives: 1) the definition of the UI as a combination of widgets from a selected RIA technology; and 2) the specification of the UI interaction as a consequence of the events produced by the user. In order to illustrate how this RIA Metamodel can be used in a Model-driven Engineering (MDE) method, this work also presents the integration of the RIA Metamodel with the OOWS method.

Improving Automatic UML2 Profile Generation for MDA Industrial Development

In the context of MDA-oriented solutions, a modeling language with a precise semantics is a mandatory requirement. Even though MDA encourages the use of UML, there are several MDA approaches that define their own Domain Specific Modeling Languages (DSML) in order to obtain the needed semantic precision. However, the high acceptance of UML in the software industry has led different MDA-approaches to integrate their DSMLs semantics into UML by means of UML profiles. Certain approaches provide alternatives to elaborate a UML profile from the DSML metamodel, but generally speaking, the resultant profile does not include all the semantic expressiveness of the original DSML. This paper provides a solution that is focused on the MDA industrial development. This solution is based on a systematic approach to generate a DSML metamodel that is used to automatically obtain a UML profile that has all the expressiveness of the original DSML.

Understandability measurement in an early usability evaluation for model-driven development: an empirical study

Traditionally, usability has been evaluated taking into account the users satisfaction when interacting with the software system. However, in a Model-Driven Development (MDD) process, where conceptual models are the main resource for software system generation, the usability can potentially be evaluated at earlier stages. This work goes one step further proposing that certain usability attributes, specifically internal understandability attributes, can be measured from Conceptual Models. This work presents an empirical study carried out to evaluate the proposal. The goal of this study is to evaluate whether the value measured using our proposal is related to the understandability value perceived by the end user. From the analysis of the empirical results obtained, several weaknesses of the proposal are stated.

Using Profiles to Support Model Transformations in the Model-Driven Development of User Interfaces

The model-driven User Interface (UI) development life cycle usually evolves from high-level models, which represent abstract UI concepts, to concrete models, which are more related to the UI implementation details, until the final UI is generated. This process is based on a set of model-to-model and model-to-code transformations. Several industrial tools have applied this approach in order to generate the UI. However, these model transformations are mainly fixed and are not always the best solution for a specific UI. In this work, the notion of Transformation Profile is introduced to better specify the model-to-model transformations. A Transformation Profile is made up of a set of predefined Model Mappings and a Transformation Template. The mappings connect initial and target UI models in a flexible way, whereas the Transformation Template gathers high-level parameters to apply to the transformation. As a consequence, a Transformation Profile enables designers to define parameterized transformations that could be reused for another UI development project.

Towards an Early Usability Evaluation for Web Applications

In the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community, the usual way to measure usability is through a user test. The disadvantage of this way is that the system must be implemented before performing the test. As a consequence, developers must solve the usability issues in the last stages of the development process. Currently, the model-driven software development is gaining popularity as a solution to reduce changes impact. In this paper, a usability model is proposed to evaluate early usability from the conceptual schemas that represents a Web Application. This approach allows to incorporate usability improvements before the implementation of the final web application. We evaluate the usability of artefacts modelled with OOWS, a model-driven web engineering method. In addition, two case studies are used to verify the instruments proposed to evaluate our early usability model.

Early Usability Measurement in Model-Driven Development: Definition and Empirical Evaluation

Usability is currently a key feature for developing quality systems. A system that satisfies all the functional requirements can be strongly rejected by end-users if it presents usability problems. End-users demand intuitive interfaces and an easy interaction in order to simplify their work. The first step in developing usable systems is to determine whether a system is or is not usable. To do this, there are several proposals for measuring the system usability. Most of these proposals are focused on the final system and require a large amount of resources to perform the evaluation (end-users, video cameras, questionnaires, etc.). Usability problems that are detected once the system has been developed involve a lot of reworking by the analyst since these changes can affect the analysis, design, and implementation phases. This paper proposes a method to minimize the resources needed for the evaluation and reworking of usability problems. We propose an early usability evaluation that is based on conceptual models. The analyst can measure the usability of attributes that depend on conceptual primitives. This evaluation can be automated taking as input the conceptual models that represent the system abstractly.

Model-Driven Web Engineering in the CMS Domain: A Preliminary Research Applying SME

In recent years, the use of Content Management Systems (CMS) as the core tool to define a Web application has gained popularity. However, the Model-Driven Web Engineering methods are not well fitted into the CMS domain. The main reason is that these methods are mainly focusing on the data and navigation aspects. To address this problem we propose in this chapter the use of Situational Method Engineering in order to detect the potential issues and improvements of a Web Engineering method in the CMS domain. Specifically, the suitability of the OOWS method in the context of CMS-based Web applications is evaluated by means of a user-registration use case. From the results of this evaluation, a list of current limitations of the OOWS Method in the CMS domain are detected. Additionally the improvements that can be applied from a SME perspective are introduced.

Applying Conceptual Modeling to Better Understand the Human Genome

The objective of the work is to present the benefits of the application of Conceptual Modeling (CM) in complex domains, such as genomics. This paper explains the evolution of a Conceptual Schema of the Human Genome (CSHG), which seeks to provide a clear and precise understanding of the human genome. We want to highlighting all the advantages of the application of CM in a complex domain such as Genomic Information Systems (GeIS). We show how over time this model has evolved, thus we have discovered better forms of representation. As we advanced in exploring the domain, we understood that we should be extending and incorporating the new concepts detected into our model. Here we present and discuss the evolution to reach the current version (CSHG v2). A solution based on conceptual models gives a clear definition of the domain with direct implications for the medical context.

Capability-Driven Development of a SOA Platform: A Case Study

Capability-driven development (CDD) is a novel paradigm for organisational modelling and information technology development. Its cornerstones are capability modelling (including goals, context, processes), pattern-based design, and runtime context awareness and service delivery adjustment. There is a lack of empirical studies regarding the industrial application of CDD. This paper reports on a case study that focuses on capability modelling within a service-oriented architecture development project. We have collected lessons learned, as well as open challenges to feedback the improvement of the CDD methodology.

Dealing with Abstract Interaction Modeling in an MDE Development Process: A Pattern-Based Approach

Currently, in the Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) community, there is not any standard model to define the interaction between the user and the software system. However, the Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) community has been recently dealing with this issue. A widely accepted proposal is the specification of the interaction at two levels or views: an Abstract Level, in which the User Interface (UI) is defined without taking into account any technological details, and a Concrete Level, in which the previous abstract models are extended with the information related to the target technology. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the Abstract Level into the OO-Method MDE development process. Specifically, this chapter is focused on how the abstract interaction can be modeled by means of Abstract Interaction Patterns (AIPs). These patterns define a generic solution for an interaction between a user and an Information System (IS), without considering the technological details related to the final UI. In order to illustrate the approach, two AIPs are described.