Non-Monotonic Model Completion in Web Application Engineering

Abstract

Formal models are often used to verify systems and prove their correctness, and ensure that transformed models remain consistent to the original system. However, formal techniques can also be used to add reasoning in the engineering of models, predicting the developers intentions. On a programming level, a similar approach has been used very successfully in several web application frameworks. Promoting formal techniques to the web application domain is useful as web application developers increasingly need to abstract from a growing set of target platforms and technologies. We address this need and propose model completion, a formal framework to infer modelling elements. Model completion is a non-monotonic process and formalises the notion of the intended model, permitting the web application developer to focus on application design rather than scaffolding. Benchmarking an implementation of this process for a platform-independent web application modelling language illustrates its significant potential to simplify model-driven development.