Architecting Web-Based Systems with the Unified Modeling Language

Abstract

The Web and its related technologies have made possible new means of access to and visualization of information. As such, it has shaped the structure of systems in many domains, from enterprise, mission critical e-business to distributed, embedded systems. Although experience with developing and deploying quality systems for the Web, by the Web and to the Web is a fairly recent activity, it appears that there are a relatively small number of canonical architectures that work. It is possible and desirable to codify those architectural patterns in order to offer a vehicle for controlling the development of a Web system over its lifetime, and to accelerate the development of new Web systems. The UML is well suited to representing these architectural patterns.

In this presentation, we will examine the nature of Web-centric systems, and will study the common architectural patterns that apply. We will also examine the dozen or so underlying mechanisms upon which these architectures build, and show how both these architectural patterns and design patterns can be represented in the UML. We will conclude by addressing how these representations can be used in the lifecycle, supporting the notions of executable architectures and round trip engineering.