FROM THE BWW CONCEPTUAL MODEL TO THE DESIGN OF

FAMILY OF WEB APPLICATION

Roberto Paiano, Andrea Pandurino

Department of Innovation Enginneering, University of LECCE, Via per Arnesano, 73100 Lecce, Italy

Enrico Pulimeno

Department of Innovation Enginneering, University of LECCE, Via per Arnesano, 73100 Lecce, Italy

Keywords: Family of application, web application design, BWW.

Abstract: The phase of analysis and design of a modern web application with its multi-user and multi-device features

is surely a real complex task. Moreover during the design, the aspects of ergonomics, usability and human

computer interaction have to take into consideration in leading way. To answer to these requirements, many

methodologies were born. Such approaches are yet valid for the design of a single WA but became in crisis

when the main goal is to develop a framework for family of applications in a specific domain. In this paper,

starting from a knowledge base obtained using an ontological approach to BWW, we propose the guidelines

of changeover from the domain conceptual model to the Interactive Dialogue Model (IDM) for families of

applications. From the IDM model, it will be possible to derive a single application through the

specialization. In order to check the validity of the proposed considerations, we create a case study in the

environmental domain. Starting from the conceptual model, first we design the IDM model of the family of

applications and then we derive from it the IDM model of a specific web application.

1 INTRODUCTION &

BACKGROUND

The growing demand of advanced services that must

be strictly related to the customer role and work

context and must be based on web technology

available on several device, has brought the design

phase and the following development one to be a

real complex task. First the web application designer

has to plan the single aspects (information,

navigation, etc.) one by one and then to check their

possible interactions and architectural choices in

order to evaluate the quality of the final product.

Hence to manage the complexity and to support

the designer and the developer, many design

methodologies like OOHDM (Schwabe, 1996),

WSDM (De Troyer, 1998), WebML (Manolescu,

2005), HDM (Garzotto, 1993), IDM (Paolini, 2006)

and many prototyping environments was born.

In spite of these efforts, the quality of web

application is closely related to the designer

modeling experience and to his/her capability of

understanding correctly the requirements and the

context in which these requirements must be

satisfied.

In addiction, now it is not enough to model the

single Web Application (WA) but it’s important to

design a complete family of applications. The single

applications that are members of the same family

and that are designed for specific stakeholders, solve

a specified task or problem into the application

domain. Thus the design approaches good for single

WA are not more enough. The designer needs

methodological tools to represent in an adequate

way the knowledge base of entire application

domain and from which he/she could derive the

specific WA design.

In other words, the conceptual design aims to

acquire and store the domain knowledge. The real

advantage is not only strictly connected to a deeper

domain understanding but also its use during the

design phase of final application. This changeover

must be controlled thought methodological

guidelines.

Currently several languages and practices to

model the conceptual design of specific domain and

many WA design methodologies exist. But, in

190

Paiano R., Pandurino A. and Pulimeno E. (2007).

FROM THE BWW CONCEPTUAL MODEL TO THE DESIGN OF FAMILY OF WEB APPLICATION.

In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Web Interfaces and Applications, pages 190-197

DOI: 10.5220/0001273401900197

 SciTePress

literature and in the market, there is not a single,

unique and uniform approach that leads the designer

from the domain description (often expressed in

ontological language) to the application design and

in particular to web application design.

Considering this gap, in this paper we introduce

a real experience into a complex environmental

domain. In the case study, we design a WA starting

from the domain knowledge base.

In the detail, we use the BWW methodology

(Wand, 2002) (Rosemann, 2005) (Colomb, 2002) to

describe the domain. This model is complete,

objective and simple to consult and has features of

abstractness and independence from the

development technology.

As WA design methodology, we consider the

IDM methodology that, even if focused on the WAs,

is independent from the specific development

technology widening the generality of our

considerations.

In this paper we present in the section 1 the

introduction and background and we focus on IDM

and BWW presenting them; in the section 2, we

present the process to derive an IDM design of the

application family starting from the BWW

conceptual model. In the section 3, we present a case

study: in the environmental domain first we design

the conceptual model and then we obtain the IDM

design of the family of applications; we obtain also a

specific application in the application family.

Finally, in section 4 we present conclusions and

future trends.

2 IDM & BWW IN A NUTSHELL

Interactive Dialogue Model is a design methodology

able to describe the communication structure of the

information-intensive application where the main

goal is to present information to the user; thus, IDM

maximises the dialogue between user and

application. The IDM notation uses graphical

element to model the main aspects of the application

using the dialogue content concepts. IDM is made

up of two different details level: Conceptual IDM

(C-IDM) and Logical IDM (L-IDM). C-IDM is used

to discuss with the customer about information and

navigation aspect. The designer uses the two main

IDM primitives: Topic (and Group of topics) and

Relevant Relation. Using these two primitives, a first

background about information and its relationship is

made. The L-IDM diagram is a detailed design. The

designer uses the Topic and the Relevant Relation

(as in C-IDM) but the detail level is more careful. In

L-IDM diagram, the topics are detailed using the

dialogue act that describes the content information.

In L-IDM, the designer can model the access

structures to the specific information. Each topic can

have one or more Introductory act that represents the

entry point to the topic’s information. L-IDM allows

to model the operation thought the operation act.

To model the page design that is not taken in

care in the IDM methodology, it’s possible to use

the design methodology named P-IDM (strictly

connected with IDM). P-IDM allows to organize the

information content in several views and each view

is made up of contents.

The main element in the ontology BWW

(Bunge-Wand-Weber) is the thing, which models

the "things" that have a physical existence in the real

world. The thing is characterized through the

Properties. Every thing has at least one Property

and every Property belongs at least one thing.

The properties can also be classified in Instrinsic

Properties, that regard a single thing, and Mutual

Properties that is shared between two or more

things. The Law can bind the value of the property.

There are two types of law: Natural (physics laws)

or Human (designer defined). A property can have

only one type of law.

The values assumed from the property define the

thing state. The Event can change the state because

can act on its thing. The chronological collection of

the several states constitutes the History, while the

set of events constitutes the Process. If a property

change of a thing modifies an other property of

another thing the two things are defined Coupled.

The things that have property in common can be

collected in class. The System is the collection of

things that are defined coupled.

More things can form a Composite thing when

they are essential part of its existence (as an example

the thing machine is a composite thing because it is

composed from the things engine, wheels, etc..).

3 THE MIGRATION PROCESS

Starting from these methodologies, we focus on the

process to derive the IDM diagram from the BWW

model correlating one by one the single elements of

two methodologies.

The final output of this process will be a general

model of a family of applications. From this model,

applying the specific requirements of the

stakeholders, it is possible to derive the IDM model

of a specific web application.

In fact, starting from domain model without

considering the specific stakeholders, the output

could be only general. This approach has the great

advantage that it is independent from the stakeholder

requirements and, thus, all the applications that

FROM THE BWW CONCEPTUAL MODEL TO THE DESIGN OF FAMILY OF WEB APPLICATION

191

could be derived from the IDM general model will

be coherent and homogenous between themselves.

From this point of view, the IDM output model

must use only the elements that characterize the

application domain and that could not be used to

describe specific aspects of the stakeholders needs.

Thus, the elements Kind of Topic, Dialogue Act

and Relevant relation are sufficient to describe the

model of a family of applications because they

represent only concrete concepts that are

independent from stakeholder requirements and

from the designer choices.

On the contrary, the designer must not consider

the other IDM elements like Transiction Act,

Introductory Act and Subject Strategy; in fact, these

elements that define the access structures closely

related to the operating strategies of the

stakeholders, will be used during the design of the

specific applications.

In order to define a correspondence between

BWW conceptual model and IDM design

methodology, it is necessary to consider the

semantic of the BWW elements. Considering the

IDM nature, only the BWW elements containing

information have to be inserted into the IDM model:

thing, class and history.

In fact, the things describe and represent the real

objects of the application domain while the classes

group them according to their common properties.

Moreover, the information on the lifetime changes

of a thing or class is collected in the history. In the

detail, the thing and the history correspond to the

IDM Topic while the class to the IDM Kind of

Topic.

It is possible to characterize the kind of topic

defining the dialogue acts. There is a relationship

between the BWW properties (Mutual, Intrinsic and

Composite) and the dialogue acts.

In the detail, the designer has to consider only

the properties of the things that are translated into

IDM with topic; for example, if the "topic" is

derived from a history, its dialogue acts will contain

the properties of the things or classes to which the

history is referred or the properties of the events that

generated the history.

After the description of the information objects,

it is necessary to design their connections. The

relevant relations describe the navigational aspects

own of domain applications between the several

kinds of topics or topics. According to the analysis

of the BWW interaction types, the BWW elements

that better represent the IDM concept of relevant

relation are the coupled relation between the things

or classes. In BWW model, these connections

describe the mutual influence between two things in

the meaning of mutual property change.

If in BWW model a thing/class has a relation

with itself, the IDM model will present a multiple

relevant relation that links more instance of the same

topic. Thus, the IDM model is completed with the

relevant relation.

In table 1, it’s presented the schema of relation

between the BWW model and IDM model:

Table 1: The relation between the BWW element and IDM

element.

BWW Element IDM Element

Class Kind of Topic

Thing Topic

History Topic

Thing Property Dialogue Act

Class Property Dialogue Act

Event Property Dialogue Act

Thing/Class Couplet Relevant Relation

According with these considerations, the IDM

design process of a WA family of specific domain is

described into the figure 1.

After the definition of the IDM model, it is

possible to derive the single applications using

specialization technique. In the single application,

the Transition Act, Introductory Act and the Subject

Strategy are modeled. These elements describe the

views and the access structures according to the

requirements of the specific stakeholders.

Figure 1: The IDM design process of a WA family.

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192

4 THE CASE STUDY

In order to verify the proposed approach, we

produced a case study based on the environmental

domain. The knowledge of case study has been

realized into an industrial research program

promoted by private company and Italian

Government. The research program, developed with

standard UML technique, aims to create a

framework to acquire, to process and to disseminate

environmental information, according to

international Agreements and European and

National Regulations, intended to satisfy needs of

the operative structures of Public Administrations.

The framework has to allow the generating of

families of applications which are customized for

specific needs and can share a common base

(Paiano, 2006) reducing realization time and

improving quality.

In the case study, before the BWW conceptual

model has been realized, and then applying the IDM

migration process, the design of application family

has been produced.

4.1 The Environmental Domain and

the BWW Model

We consider the environmental protection: the

habitat of all the organisms and the organic

structures of systems and subsystems.

Environmental protection has considerably evolved

in the last years. In the sixties, the public

administration main goal was the control laid down

by law. Today great importance is given to the

knowledge acquisition of the factors that affect

heavily the environment quality. This choice is

determined by the high growth rate of the population

and by the evolution of the productive system that

makes pressure on the environment.

Today, monitoring activity and environmental

control is not only developed by the local

government (Municipality, Provinces, and Regions)

but also by several associations, organizations and

agencies.

To improve the quality of the environment,

organization and institution nets were born in order

to facilitate the collaboration for applying a common

environmental policy. The efforts to collect and to

deliver environmental knowledge in the Italian and

European areas do not match with the regional

institutional levels, because the technological

infrastructures do not support informative

exchanges.

The figure 2 shows a scratch of the BWW

conceptual model of environmental domain. In order

to make legible the model, for the derived things and

classes, the diagram shows only the mutual

properties (for the classes) or the intrinsic properties

(for the things) that are not in common with the

class father.

In order to obtain the BWW domain design, we

detect only the real environmental objects that will

become things or classes. Thus, the real object

Agency/Organization has been modeled with one

thing.

The agency is linked with the indicator from

which they obtain information on the environment

state. The indicators have a physical existence and in

the BWW conceptual model there is the thing

Indicator.

If the indicator value exceeds the threshold value

because of a phenomenon or fact of ambient

importance (FIA), the agency putted in charge of the

environment protection generates an alarm. The

changes of the indicator thing are described through

the History_FIA.

Table 2: The BWW property and IDM dialogue act.

Name BWW

element

Type

BWW Property IDM

element

Type

IDM Dialogue act

Agency/

Organization

thing Intrinsic: name , function,

Territorial scope

topic Dialogue act: name, function,

Territorial scope

Subject class Intrinsic: name, placement,

constraint, category

topic Dialogue act: name, placement,

constraint, category

DIA class Mutual: name, delivery_date,

purpose, DIA_state

topic Dialogue act: name, delivery_date,

purpose DIA_state

OST class Intrinsic: name, dimension,

category, constraint

topic Dialogue act: name, dimension,

category, constraint

FIA history Indicator Property: value,

place

FIA Property: description

kind of

topic

Dialogue act: value, place, description

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193

The environmental protection area is described

with the class OSS (Objects, Subject, and

Structures). This class describes and catalogues

generically the structures and the subject presents on

the territory. Class OSS is specialized in subclass

OST that represents the Subjects, Objects and

Structures of anthropic type and SOI that represents

the class Subject (the physical person, the company,

etc..) and Organisms (birds, mammals, etc.).

The Agencies control and take in care the

environment thought the emanation and the

performance of proceedings, of regulations and of

laws. These government instruments are represented

in the BWW model through the class DIA

(dispositions, proceedings and laws).

After the design of things and classes, the mutual

and intrinsic properties must be defined. As an

example for thing Agency/Organization the intrinsic

properties are:

 Category that defines the agency type:

municipality, province, region etc.;

 Role that allows to describes the agency tasks

on the territory;

 Territorial scope that indicates the action area

of the agency;

 Condition that indicates the condition of the

agency; it can assume the values of alarm,

attention, monitoring, etc.;

 Function that contains the information of the

several activities that the Agency can do.

In the same way, it is possible to find the mutual

property for the classes; it’s clear that the properties

defined for the parent class must not be defined for

the derived classes because they are inherited in the

subclass.

The relations between thing/class describe the

thing/class interaction thought the events. As an

example, Event-FIA puts in relation the OSS class

with the Indicator thing through an event that

changes its property Value; in the same way, the

events Event-AllarmState and Event-Emanation can

be modeled.

Thus all the existing relations in conceptual model

BWW are modeled, obtaining an objective design of

the environmental domain at a high level

abstraction.

4.2 From BWW Model to IDM Model

Starting form the environmental conceptual model,

the migration process described above has been

applied.

Thus as first step, the BWW elements that

characterize the domain information have been

identified. In the case study, we consider the

elements: Agency/Organization (that will generate a

topic because it is a thing), Subjects, DIA, OST (that

will be topic because they are classes) and the FIA

(that will be a kind of topic because it is a history).

After the topic, we define the dialogue acts

analyzing the BWW property. Table 2 shows the

dialogue act.

The dialogue acts related to the kind of topic FIA

derive from the properties value and localization of

thing Indicator (to which the FIA history refers) and

from the property description of the event-FIA that

concur to define the history itself.

Mutual properties constrains and category of

OSS class will be associated as dialogue acts of the

IDM topic (like topic Subject) that represent the

classes derived from OSS. The figure 3 shows some

illustrative

examples.

After identified the information units (kind of

topic) and theirs component (dialogue acts), the

navigational relationships have to be defined.

According to the migration process, the navigational

relationships will be derived from the BWW coupled

relations between the things or classes.

According to the BWW domain conceptual

model, the IDM relevant relations are:

 The thing Agency/Organization has the Event-

Emanation relation (with the class DIA) and

Event-cooperate (with itself), thus in the IDM

diagram the relevant relation Cooperate (of

Figure 3: Example of dialogue act definition.

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topic the Agency/Organization with itself) and

Emanates (with the topic DIA) will be

inserted.

 The kind of topic DIA has three relevant

relations with topics OST, Subject and

Agency/Organization. Relevant relation

Ruling is defined starting from the BWW

coupled relation Event-Ruling between DIA

and OSS; in fact, the DIA is in relation also

with class the OST and Subjects because the

coupled relations are inherited from the

subclass.

 The relevant relation referred between the DIA

and Agency/Organization is not present in

model BWW but we defined it because it’s the

inverse relation of relation Emanate that is

present in BWW conceptual model.

 The topic Subject has the relevant relation

Impact with the OST topic derived from the

coupled relation Event-established that

Subject inherits from the class SOI; moreover,

the relevant relation Include (its inverse) has

been inserted. The topic Subject introduces

also a navigational relation with the FIA: the

coupled relation Event-FIA that exists between

class the OSS (inherited by Subjects), and the

Indicator thing; in fact, the FIA topic derives

from the history-FIA of Indicator. The inverse

relation Caused-by has been inserted between

the FIA and Subjects in order to optimize

navigation; the direct relation exists yet in the

BWW model.

In figure 4, there is the IDM output diagram

obtained applying the migration process to the

BWW domain model.

After obtained the IDM model of the family of

applications in the environmental domain, a real

application (not related to our regional territory) is

derived from it: the official web site of the Authority

of basin of PO River (http://www.adbpo.it).

The site supplies the news of the tasks developed

by the authority and it gives the opportunity to a

generic customer of acquire information about the

agency structure, about the several authority

projects, about the project managers. In figure 5, the

IDM model is showed.

In order to verify the generic IDM model, the

reverse engineering of the web site has been

produced. The output model has been compared

with the IDM model of the family of applications.

The IDM model of web site of the Authority of

basin of PO River has been turned out totally

integrated in the general IDM model.

Furthermore, we have the need to verify if the

original BWW domain representation is able to

describe a specific application not considered before

in order to acquire the domain knowledge.

Comparing the diagram of figure 5 with the

environmental domain model of figure 1, it is

possible to place in relation the diagram elements

with those of BWW model. During the comparison,

we have to consider not the name of dialogue acts or

properties but the information that it represents. In

the detail, we have the following information:

 Agency topic: it is referred to the

Agency/organization of BWW conceptual

model; in fact, it describes the same

information that have been of the thing

property: the dialogue Act

Description/presentation has the same of the

Role, the dialogue act territorial authority the

same of territorial scope, Structure and

publishing with the property Function.

 Planning topic: it traces the information about

the active tasks on the river basin, of the

deliberations and valid rules; therefore, it is a

collection of dispositions, of tasks and of

actions. Thus, it is a member of the most

Figure 4: The IDM schema obtained applying the migration process.

FROM THE BWW CONCEPTUAL MODEL TO THE DESIGN OF FAMILY OF WEB APPLICATION

195

general class DIA to which is related in

BWW. The not perfect comparison in BWW

underlines the general model character; in

fact, it must guarantee the presence of the

generalizations of the elements that constitute

the domain, and not their specific requests.

 Plans topic: it is a specialization of the DIA

class; in fact, the dialogue acts

description/presentation and plan can be

related to the Purpose property, while the

dialogue act variance to the History_DIA.

 Strategic Planning topic: It is refereed to the

DIA class because it describes the purposes

and the several phase of action plan.

 Institutional Committee, General

Secretariat, Technical Committee topics:

they are specialization of the thing

Agency/Organization because represent

several institutional organisms that collaborate

into the decision process about the tasks on

the basin of the Po river.

In order to highlight, these existing relations

between the two models are showed into the table

3: in the two column are related the topic of the

river basin of the Po and the BWW concepts.

Table 3: The relations between the two models.

IDM model topic of

www.adbpo.it

BWW domain element

model

Agency Agency/Organization

Planing DIA

Po Basin hydrographical basin

Strategic Planning DIA

Institutional

Committee

Agency/Organization

General Secretariat Agency/Organization

Technical Committee Agency/Organization

Plan DIA

5 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE

WORKS

The problem to have a model of a family of

applications that, describing the domain knowledge

allows to derive specific applications, has in

literature a methodological gap. This paper is an

attempt to cover this gap proposing a design process

of a family of applications that uses as input an

ontological model. In the detail, this study focuses

on the changeover from ontological BWW model to

a model of WA design using IDM methodology. In

order to verify the output models and therefore also

the proposed considerations, we present a case

study: the reverse engineering of an existing

application. The obtained model has been perfectly

compatible with the output IDM model of the family

of applications. As next research step, we are

Figura 5: The IDM model of www.adbpo.it.

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196

planning an editor that will integrate the BWW-IDM

methodology in order to support the WA designer in

the design of the conceptual domain in BWW, of the

IDM schema of family of applications and in the

derived WAs.

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