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PhD Student: Andrea
Schauerhuber
Supervisors: Gerti
Kappel, Werner
Retschitzegger, Wieland
Schwinger
Ubiquitous web applications (UWA) are a new type of web applications
which are accessed in various contexts, i.e., through different devices,
by users with various interests, at anytime from anyplace around the
globe. In this respect, customization functionality exploits information
on this context of use in order to adapt the application's services
accordingly. In web application development, customization is considered
a new dimension which increases complexity by ”crosscutting” the content,
hypertext, and presentation levels of a web application. Hence, from
a software engineering point of view, a systematic development of UWAs
on the basis of models is crucial. In model-driven engineering (MDE),
models are employed ”as programs” to (semi-) automatically generate
applications, which results in more efficient development processes
as well as better maintainability and evolution of software. Customization
functionality, however, is typically intermingled with the core functionality
in a web application model, having a negative effect on understandability,
reuse, maintenance and evolution. The aspect-orientation paradigm provides
a new way of modularizing crosscutting concerns such as customization
within so-called aspects, as well as the necessary means for composing
the previously separated concerns in order to obtain the complete application
model. There are already some web modeling approaches dealing with the
ubiquitous nature of web applications, amongst them, first proposals
to use aspect-orientation. Nevertheless, these approaches suffer from
the following problems: First, they don't consider the crosscutting
nature of customization comprehensively, but for the hypertext level,
only. Second, just very basic aspect-oriented modeling (AOM) concepts
are used, resulting in less powerful mechanisms for separating customization.
Third, composition of concerns is not regarded for the modeling level.
And fourth, model-driven development of UWAs in the sense of MDE is
still limited due to missing metamodel specifications and lack of tool
support.
The overall aim of this thesis is the exhaustive use of aspect-orientation
as driving paradigm for comprehensively modeling customization aspect
separately from all web application levels as well as providing means
for composing the aspect with the web application model. Therefore,
this thesis proposes the aspectUWA approach, which suggests a generic
framework for extending existing web modeling languages with AOM concepts
within the realms of MDE. In the context of this thesis, aspectUWA is
applied to the web modeling language WebML, which doesn't allow to separately
model customization. The major contributions of this thesis are as follows:
(i) A Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) for AOM has been developed to
form the aforementioned general framework. (ii) A metamodel for WebML
has been semi-automatically generated from an existing DTD-based language
specification in order to allow for MDE. (iii) The aspectWebML language
has been designed on basis of the CRM and represents WebML's port to
AOM allowing for modeling customization separately as well as for composing
the customization aspect with the rest of the web application model.
(iv) An initial set of guidelines to be used for modeling customization
within aspectWebML is proposed. And (v), the aspectWebML Modeling Environment
provides the often missing tool support for modeling crosscutting concerns
as well as their composition.
Thesis Resources
The aspectWebML language
The aspectWebML Modeling Environment
Master Theses
Relevant Publications
- Andrea Schauerhuber. aspectUWA: Applying Aspect-Orientation
to the Model-Driven Development of Ubiquitous Web Applications.
PhD Thesis, Vienna University of Technology, October 2007 [PDF
file]
- Andrea Schauerhuber.aspectUWA: Applying Aspect-Orientation
to the Model-Driven Development of Ubiquitous Web Applications.
Student Extravaganza: Spring School, AOSD'06, Bonn, Germany, March
19, 2006.[PDF
file]
- Andrea Schauerhuber. aspectUWA: Applying Aspect-Orientation
to the Model-Driven Development of Ubiquitous Web Applications.
Student Extravaganza: Poster Event, AOSD'06, Bonn, Germany, March
22, 2006. (POSTER)[PDF
file]
- Andrea Schauerhuber, Wieland Schwinger, Elisabeth Kapsammer, Werner
Retschitzegger, Manuel Wimmer. Towards a Common Reference
Architecture for Aspect-Oriented Modeling. 8th International
Workshop on Aspect-Oriented Modeling, in conjunction with AOSD'06,
Bonn, Germany, March 21, 2006. [PDF
file] [slides]
- Andrea Schauerhuber, Wieland Schwinger, Elisabeth Kapsammer, Werner
Retschitzegger, Manuel Wimmer, and Gerti Kappel. A Survey
on Aspect-Oriented Modeling Approaches. Submitted August
2006. [project page]
- Andrea Schauerhuber, Manuel Wimmer, Wieland Schwinger, Elisabeth
Kapsammer, and Werner Retschitzegger. Aspect-Oriented Modeling
of Ubiquitous Web Applications: The aspectWebML Approach.
5th Workshop on Model-Based Development for ComputerBased Systems:
Domain-Specific Approaches to Model-Based Development, in conjunction
with ECBS'07, Tucson, AZ, USA, March 2007. [PDF
file] [project
page]
- Manuel Wimmer, Andrea Schauerhuber, Elisabeth Kapsammer, and Gerhard
Kramler. From Document Type Definitions to Metamodels: The
WebML Case Study. Vienna University of Technology, March
2006. [project
page]
- Andrea Schauerhuber, Manuel Wimmer, and Elisabeth Kapsammer. Bridging
existing Web Modeling Languages to Model-Driven Engineering: A Metamodel
for WebML. Workshop on Model-Driven Web Engineering (MDWE
2006), in conjunction with ICWE'06, Standford Linear Accelerator Center,
Palo Alto, California, July 2006. [project
page] [PDF
file] [slides]
- Andrea Schauerhuber, Manuel Wimmer, Elisabeth Kapsammer, Wieland
Schwinger, and Werner Retschitzegger. Bridging WebML to model-driven
engineering: from document type definitions to meta object facility.
IET Software Journal, Vol. 1, No. 3, Institution of Engineering and
Technology, June 2007. [project
page]
- further publications
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