Conclusions

In this chapter, we briefly summarize the results achieved in this book, and we will provide some indications on possible future developments. In the book’s coverage, we mainly focus on the design and on the development of complex Web information systems that are information systems that aim to manage, in an explicit way, the design of the processes inside the Web application as support for them.

Case Studies

This chapter presents the detailed output of the two code generators showed in the previous chapter. For the first code generator software, the main focus is on the design of layout that, modeled using the specific editor integrated into the case tool showed in Chapter XIII, can create a complete application. In particular, applying to the generated application a specific cascade style sheet, the generated application is really closer to the original one.

Web Application Process-Oriented Design for External Users

There are several problems to face in the definition of the methodology of design object of this chapter. In regards to the internal users of the company that mainly use the information system through the company intranet, the principal problems to face is adjusting to a design of the business processes made up by the business experts to a design oriented to the specific demands of the IT experts without changing the underlying representation that is the BPMN™ (OMG, 2006) representation of the business processes.

Tool to Support the Design Methdology

As it will be clearer subsequently, two different technologies will be used for realizing the generation of the code; the first one predominantly focused on the generation of code for the Web applications that do not have an underlying business process, and that they do not require, therefore, the management of the relative problems. The second technology has been selected instead, to also keep in mind the business processes. In order to provide support to the designer in the design of the whole complex Web information system, it is essential to provide a suitable tool that hides the intrinsic complexity of the methodology supporting the designer in the application of the same that is often complex, and the tool has to be able to translate the design made up in a machine readable format to be able to use this design in the following automatic code generation of the Web application according to a model-driven approach. In this chapter, we introduce the design and implementation of the editor made up mainly of the architecture presented (and based on Eclipse™ Platform as illustrated in the preceding chapter) and on the methodological steps of integration among the several editors for the design and implementation of these guidelines.

From the Model to the Code Generator

Surely, the design phase is one of the most important in the whole information system life cycle. The design phase allows realizing of the information system according to an engineering approach that by abstracting itself completely from the implementation details, it can adequately focus itself on the design aspects allowing for provision of a clear and precise methodological guideline to the developers. In this way, a high level of quality is guaranteed to the information system that will be not influenced by ad hoc decisions made up by the developers; decisions that, in the greatest part of the cases, are deprived of a suitable methodological support, and that inevitably bring to a diminution of the total quality of the project.

The Design Vision

From the considerations made in the previous chapters, it emerges that the design of the complex Web information system must consider in a separate way two most important aspects of Web application: on one hand, the definition of the business processes, and on the other hand, to identify an optimal way to define what information is remarkable and how to present this information to the final user.

Evolution of Business Process Notation

The analysis of the business processes, realized through visits and interviews to the employees, must necessarily aim to provide for visibility to a large range of operation of the whole process knowledge; this misses very often to the company: each operator sees only the part of the process that tightly competes with it and only an analysis realized by an external team (or that succeeds in abstracting from the specific problems of every actor of the business process) can gather the process in its entirety.

Case Study for Internal Users

The case immediately introduces it as a case strongly oriented to the logic of process and for which the operator, which in this context operates by the business intranet, does not have necessity of particular navigation, but it only has to limit itself to performing the orders of service. For this case study, therefore, the problem to choose the better methodology to apply is not present, but that proposed for the internal users immediately seems the most suitable.

A Case Study for External Users

The case of study in examination has the goal of realizing a Web application to support an operator of a tourist agency that wants to realize a tourist package according to the requirements of the customer. The operator has to organize the trip starting from the purchase of the flights or the railway ticket up to the booking of the service of car rental, of taxi, of the hotel or other tourist features. The proposed solution has to be that much closer to the demands of the user relative to the destination, to the dates and to the range of price that he/she will have pointed out.

Code Generators

In this chapter, the design and the development of the code generating tools based on the technologies (described in Chapter XI) are presented. In detail, the chapter describes the development of the tools that manages P-IDM design as a Web application input model (the design does not take care the presence of the process level); also, it describes the tool that considers as input model the P-IDM process design. It is clear that the two designs will be represented using the ontological language OWL (W3C, 2004). In the description of the tool that uses the P-IDM model as input, the main focus is on the page composition (based on the framework tiles) (http://www.apache.org) and thus, the focus is on the final graphical aspect of the generated application. In the description of the tool that uses the P-IDM process, the main focus is on the aspect related to navigational aspect; the navigation is driven by the process and so the tool description is mainly oriented to show the process flow configuration.