Web page reuse techniques: a dynamic referential navigational guide

Abstract

In the field of software engineering it is generally recognised that the reuse of existing components can lead to greater productivity and cost-effectiveness, together with a more reliable and easier to maintain software product of high quality. In short, software reusability is an essential attribute of a high, quality, reliable software component. However, most Web pages are currently constructed for a particular system or Web-site rather than being built with reuse in mind. Any reuse of these pages is based on ad hoc reuse rather than systematic reuse. This article presents a new approach for Web-page reuse called a dynamic referential navigational guide (DReNG). Based on the page-component instead of the predetermined link concept, a more structured design is proposed. Generic Web pages are built as reusable components and viewed as black boxes. A master page is used for each system developed, as a reference guide, to store the navigational links and the navigational mechanisms between these pages. It is based on a "triple linked list" structure, where "back", "forward", and "homepage" pointers are maintained and potentially can be extended to unlimited pointers wherever an "n-tuple linked list" might be needed. Two further problems associated with the development of Web-based systems: the tracing and the maintenance of the same page across different systems or even across different servers have also been tackled.