Model driven evolution of web applications

Abstract

Reverse engineering is usually used to recover missing and up to date models of a software system to support its comprehension when changes are required to maintain or evolve it. Model driven engineering approaches have been recently proposed to develop more quickly web applications with a high design quality and maintainability. Integrating reverse engineering techniques with model driven web engineering methods originates evolution approaches that would reduce the evolution effort while improving the quality of the modified web application. Such an evolution process exploits the models recovered by reverse engineering as the inputs of a model driven web engineering approach to design and implement the modified/evolved version of the application. This paper describes a general process for the model driven evolution of web applications, suitable for any model driven web engineering method. An instance of such a process tailored for the Ubiquitous Web Applications (UWA) design methodology is also briefly summarized.