IEEE --- 2005 International Conference on Emerging Technologies September 17-18, Islamabad 1 Rashid Ahmad2, Zhang Li, Farooque Azam Department of Computer Science Beihang University of Aeronautics & Astronautics (BUAA), Beijing, China {r.ahmad, lily, farooque }@buaa.edu.cn Abstract 'CERN' in 1990. Mr. Tim Berners-Lee with a background in text processing and real-time Web Engineerfing, an emerging new discipline, communications, wanted to create an information advocates a process and a systematic approach to system in which researchers could exchange development of high quality Web based systems. In information during the course of a project. He came up contrast the commercial practice still remains ad-hoc. with a method of linking documents together using Although the web based systems has become hypertext technology. Since then this emerging increasingly complex, the development process is still discipline went through many mile stones. Table no 1 un-engineered. “There are very few standard methods mentions some of the major mile stones. for the Web developers to use. Hence, there is a strong need to understand and undertake Web Engineering”. Table 1; Journey of Web Engineering [1] This paper is a result of our extensive survey of 1990 • World Wide Web originates-1990 - literature, our work and interaction with developers. • Hypertext Markup Language written-1991 1995 This paper gives an introductory overview on Web • Text-based browser opens WWW for use-1992 • New Web terms: HTTP and URL-1992 Engineering. It assesses similarities and differences • Graphical user interface, Mosaic, developed-1993 between development of traditional software and Web • HTML introduced as code for web design-1993 based systems, and reviews some of the ongoing work • World Wide Web Consortium,W3C founded-1994 in this area. We discuss the need for development of 1996 • First Paper about Web Engineering related process model for web based applications (WBA), such - problems appear at the 5th WWW Conference in as is available for conventional software, with an 2001 France-1996 overview of our work on development of such a • Microsoft releases Explorer 3.0 Web browse-1996 process framework [2]. This paper also attempts to • Web Engineering Homepage published highlight the areas that need further study. WebEngineering.org -1997 • First workshop on Web Engineering organized at 1. Introduction and history the 7th WWW Conference in Australia-1998 • First International Conference on Web Engineering A very simple but inclusive definition of Web (ICWE)-2001 2002 application amongst the many available we found We • For the first time Web Engineering became part of - the main program-2002 define a WBA as “any software application that 2005 • First international Journal on Web Engineering depends on the Web for its correct execution” [3] [3] published by Rinton Press, USA-2002 Web Engineering is defined [4], by experienced • Web Engineering became an area of the refereed researchers in the field, as: “The application of paper track at the WWW conference, demonstrating systematic, disciplined and quantifiable approaches to the emerging need for a discipline on development, development, operation, and maintenance of Web- operation, and evolution of Web applications-2003 based Information Systems (WIS)”. • W3C describes principles of Web architecture-2004 The World Wide Web (WWW) originated at the • W3C actively busy in standardizing protocols and European Particle Physics Laboratory known as web technologies-2005 1 This work is supported by National University of Science and Technology (NUST), Rawalpindi, Pakistan 2 Corresponding Author: Email: [email protected] 0-7803-9247-7/05/$20.00 ©2005 IEEE 445 IEEE --- 2005 International Conference on Emerging Technologies September 17-18, Islamabad network/Internet) are prone to attacks by hackers 2. [Web, Software] Engineering: Clones who are not even Customers. Data released (Figure 1) by CERT® Coordination or Siblings? ∗ Center under the heading “Recent CERT/CC Pressman [5] says Web Engineering is not a Experiences” [11], gives an idea of the enormous perfect “Clone” of software engineering but it borrows number of “Reported” attacks. Despite the fact that many of software engineering’s fundamental concepts CERT/CC people say the organizations do not report and principles, emphasizing the same technical and the attacks for the fear not to loose the confidence of management activities. .Difference between Web the customers Engineering and Software Engineering received much We conclude this debate by calling Web debate from the researchers [6], [7], [8], [9], [10] in the Engineering and Software Engineering as sibling, last few years. Many researchers have identified very assuming Software Engineer and Web Engineer as interesting differences. We just enlist the few which parents (leaving aside to know who is female!). has impact on development process (for detail study of 100,000 their impact we refer the reader to [7] : Total incidents reported (1989-2002): 182,463 • WBA have increased emphasis on user interface 90,000 • Open modularized architectures 80,000 82,094 • Link between business model and architecture 70,000 • Rapidly changing technologies 60,000 • More content-driven than software engineering. 55,100 50,000 • Increased importance of quality attributes • Client uncertainty 40,000 • Changing business requirements 30,000 21,756 • Short time frames for initial delivery 20,000 9,859 • Fine-grained evolution and maintenance 10,000 • Highly competitive 0 We however identify another important difference 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 which has not yet been discussed by others. Author [5] 19 19 19 19 19 20 20 20 20 says conventional software system has three “Players”. Figure 1. Total Incidents reported (1988-2003): 182, 483 They are Client (owner who orders the software system also known as customer), Developer, and User 3. Need for a Process Models (who uses the software system). We argue that the WBA has four “Players”. They are Client (owner who The discussion above encourages us to view WBA orders the software system also known as customer), as special kind of as software systems; and therefore, Developer, User (who uses the software system e.g. to blindly apply existing models to the representation webmaster etc) and Customers (people accessing of WBA persuades the developers to overlook the websites). This increase in Players (Customers) has a peculiarities of these WBA, and hence not address great impact on the issues of Quality and Security. these peculiarities, leading to inappropriate solutions. Because the number of the customers and their This does not imply that existing models should not be expectations would always remain a variable and utilized; rather we need to do so with an awareness of would not be predictable, this would always have an their limitations with respect to the aspects of WBA impact on the Quality and Security in the following that we wish to understand and document. We also manner: need to understand how these limitations may be • In case of conventional software system for Quality circumvented by appropriately supplementing (or the Developer has to satisfy Client and a known replacing where necessary) the models [7]. In this number of Users only. Whereas incase of WBA section we discuss few more aspects which necessitate other than these two (client, user), the system must that process models for engineered web development serve the Quality needs of a diverse community of have to be used. Customers which can grow enormously with a varying intellectual level. • In case of conventional software system “security” is ∗ The CERT Coordination Center is part of the Software the issue with in organization but WBA being Engineering Institute. The Software Engineering Institute is network intensive (i.e. resides on the sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense. 446 IEEE --- 2005 International Conference on Emerging Technologies September 17-18, Islamabad 3.1. Rapid shift from simplicity to complexity 4. Ongoing research work The complexity of WBA has grown significantly In this section we have discussed the current and very rapidly. Table no 2 explains it further. [12] active research work which we have identified in our thorough survey. We believe that this section is the Table 2; A shift from simplicity to complexity strength of our paper as this gives complete overview Past Systems Present Systems of the present and future of the Web Engineering as a • Simple Web pages • Complex Web pages discipline- a good food for a starter. • Less emphasis on aesthetics/ • More emphasis on user interface aesthetic, user interface 4.1. MDA (Model Driven Architecture) for • Information content static • Information is dynamic Web Engineering • Simple navigation • Complex navigate • Stand-alone systems • Integrated with database and other systems Model-Driven Software Engineering (MDE) is • High performance wasn’t a • Requires high performance becoming a widely accepted approach for developing major requirement complex distributed applications The MDA defined by • Developed by a single • Requires a large OMG (object management group), is an approach to individual/small team development team using models in software development, with the goals • Used for information • Deployed in mission- of portability, interoperability and reusability through dissemination in non core critical applications architectural separation of concerns. Software applications development in the MDA starts with a Platform- Independent