Description
Frameworks represent a prominent re-use technique in engineering web appli- cation. Web applications and their development drive and reflect fundamental tendencies observed for information system development in more general [1]. These characteristics translate into specific requirements on code and design re-use as provided by frameworks. For the scope of this paper, we focus on the observation that web applications are frequently devised for re-engineering legacy applications in terms of integration or migration [2,3]. Beyond this area of application, fields such as technology-enhanced learning [4] increasingly de- mand web applications to interact in a distributed manner. This, finally, leads to the issue of realising, supporting, and integrating infrastructures for brokerage in frameworks dedicated to web application development. Brokerage describes infrastructure facilities that sufficiently abstract from the necessities of materi- alising distributed applications [5]. We put emphasis on web services as specific technology blend for realising brokerage. Against this background, the paper provides a threefold contribution: First, we elicit on the characteristic requirements on engineering web applications and staging web application frameworks. Selected requirements, second, enter the elaboration of a comparison scheme which depicts dimensions relevant to broker- age support in web application frameworks. These dimensions include technology projections, architectural considerations, integration with sub-frameworks (security, content production and delivery, caching, testing, etc.) common to web application frameworks, and support of development styles. Third, and finally, we apply this scheme by presenting a comparative analysis of the state of brokerage support realised in current web application frameworks, e.g. OpenACS, Ruby on Rails, Zope, Spring, Zend, just to name a few.| Period | 12 Feb 2008 → 16 Feb 2008 |
|---|---|
| Event title | OpenACS and .LRN Conference |
| Event type | Unkonwn |
| Degree of Recognition | International |
Austrian Classification of Fields of Science and Technology (ÖFOS)
- 503008 E-learning
- 502050 Business informatics