25 Years of Model-Driven Web Engineering: What we achieved, What is missing

Sergio Firmenich,Gustavo Rossi,Matias Urbieta,Jose Matias Rivero,Damiano Distante

doi:10.19153/cleiej.19.3.1

Abstract

Model-Driven Web Engineering (MDWE) approaches aim to improve the Web applications development process by focusing on modeling instead of coding, and deriving the running application by transformations from conceptual models to code. The emergence of the Interaction Flow Modeling Language (IFML) has been an important milestone in the evolution of Web modeling languages, indicating not only the maturity of the field but also a final convergence of languages. In this paper we explain the evolution of modeling and design approaches since the early years (in the 90’s) detailing the forces which drove that evolution and discussing the strengths and weaknesses of some of those approaches. A brief presentation of the IFML is accompanied with a thorough analysis of the most important achievements of the MDWE community as well as the problems and obstacles that hinder the dissemination of model-driven techniques in the Web engineering field.

Highlights

Introduction and MotivationThe explosive growth of the Web as a platform for building software applications and as a means for communication, entertainment, education and commerce has dramatically changed the landscape of software development
As we will show in this paper the techniques for dealing with the latter concern while present in every interactive application can be considered in some way the most important contribution of Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (Models)-Driven Web Engineering (MDWE) approaches to the software engineering field
MDWE has evolved with new and fresh approaches. In these 25 years a lively community has emerged and this community has contributed with the advance of the general software engineering field

Summary

Introduction

Introduction and MotivationThe explosive growth of the Web as a platform for building software applications and as a means for communication, entertainment, education and commerce has dramatically changed the landscape of software development. As described elsewhere [65], the MDWE discipline had to deal with a myriad of new issues as well as the adaptation of some of the existing solutions in the software engineering and in the MDSE field Examples of this are: the relationships among the concepts in the Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) approach and the architectural variants in the Web, the need of different meta-models for specific concerns in Web applications development, the emergence of service, social and cloud-computing and its impact in the definition of models, the impact of multidisciplinary aspects in the development of models, the emergence of new kinds of stakeholders for the definition of requirements, etc.

Methods

Results

Conclusion