Simplifying a Web Application´s Architecture - the DaVinci Framework

The World Wide Web has undergone a rapid transition from the originally static hypertext to an ubiquitous hypermedia system. Today, the web is often used as a basis for distributed applications. That’s why many research work has already been done about the modeling and engineering process for web applications. Many of the published concepts try to merge hypertext modeling with traditional techniques from the software engineering domain. Unfortunately, those concepts which capture all facets of the web’s architecture become rather bulky and are eventually not applicable for serious development. The missing adoption in industry indicates this. It seems that web engineering based on the blank architecture of the WWW is no promising approach. Moreover, there is a need for architectural frameworks. Such a framework should address both, the modeling process and the implementation. DaVinci1 is the prototype of a proposed framework. It is a modeling framework as well as a framework supporting the implementation of web applications. For the modeling process UML is used. The architecture is based on the Model View Controller type 2 pattern. The major features of DaVinci are the hierarchical GUI tree and a special URL scheme to facilitate the interaction process.