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Developing end‐user tailorable Web applications using a compositional framework
Author(s) -
Mejuev I
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
software: practice and experience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1097-024X
pISSN - 0038-0644
DOI - 10.1002/spe.529
Subject(s) - computer science , scripting language , reuse , world wide web , user interface , software deployment , web application , markup language , end user , java , software engineering , multimedia , xml , operating system , ecology , biology
Since Web‐based applications are typically required to accommodate a rapid development cycle and be adaptable to the needs of heterogeneous communities of users, the ability to continue evolving after deployment (tailoring) is regarded as a valuable property for any software accessible via a WWW‐browser interface. This article introduces a reusable compositional framework to support the development of end‐user‐tailorable applications for the Web. This framework defines the composition of tailorable applications with an object‐scripting technique, based on nested compositional markup specifications. Application tailorability is achieved through the use of a ‘visualizer’ pattern that allows decoupling of tailoring interfaces from primitive components and recomposing fragments of an application at runtime. The framework permits the application of multiple tailoring interfaces (visualizers) to an application instance, reusing tailoring interfaces across multiple application domains and allows for the evolution of visual techniques for carrying out tailoring throughout a project lifecycle. This article summarizes the experience accumulated while developing the proposed framework using the Java 2 platform and introduces two case studies that have been made on the development of remote monitoring applications in the domain of large‐scale control systems in high‐energy physics and interactive multimedia courseware for the Web. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.