Abstract
Most conceptual Web design methods proposed so far focus on browsing (i.e. inquiry tasks) but it is not clear how to integrate them with transactional tasks which have a lasting effect. Moreover, tasks are commonly integrated into higher-order behavioural units: the processes. For instance, the process of a purchase includes “browsing the catalog”, “adding to the trolley”, “filling up billing data” and other tasks that end up in the fulfillment of the order. We claim that these distinct task types (i.e. inquiry and transactional tasks) impose different demands and require distinct skills from the designer. On these grounds, we envisage a bottom-up approach to web application construction. First, inquiry and transactional task design is conducted by two separate teams each with expertise in one area. Second, processes are realised through inter-task dependencies. Declarative and separate description of tasks and dependencies accounts for maintenability of the whole solution. This paper presents how this approach has been realised in AtariX, a tool environment for the specification and support of web applications. Transactional tasks reside in the middle-tier implemented as Enterprise JavaBeans whereas both inquiry tasks and inter-tasks dependencies are regulated at the Web server.
This research was partially supported by the Secretaría de Estado de Política Científica y Tecnológica of the Spanish Goverment under contract TIC 1999-1048-CO2-02. Juan J. Rodríguez enjoys a pre-doctoral grant by the Basque Goverment.
The original version of this chapter was revised: The copyright line was incorrect. This has been corrected. The Erratum to this chapter is available at DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-35658-7_21
Chapter PDF
References
P. Attie, M. Singh, A. Sheth, and M. Rusinkiewicz. Specifying and enforcing intertask dependencies. In Conf. on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB), pages 134–145, 1993.
A. Bongio, S. Ceri, P. Fraternali, and A. Maurino. Modeling data entry and operations in WebML. In WebDB (Informal Procedings), pages 87–92, 2000.
S. Ceri, P. Fraternali, and A. Bongio. Web modeling language (WebML): a modeling language for designing Web sites. Computer Networks,33(1–6):137157, 2000.
O. Diaz, F. Ibanez, and J. Iturrioz. A model-based approach to portal development. In This Volume (9th IFIP 2.6 Working Conference on Database Semantics (DS-9)), 2001.
M. Fernandez, D. Florescu, J. Kang, A. Levy, and D. Suciu. Overview of strudel: A web-site management system. Networking and Information Systems Journal, 1 (1): 115–140, 1998.
P. Hartel and R. Jungclaus. Modeling business processes over object. International Journal of Cooperative Information System, 4 (2): 165–188, 1995.
T. Isakowitz, E.A. Stohr, and P. Balasubramanian. RMM: A methodology for structured hypermedia design. Communications of the ACM, 38 (8): 34–43, 1995.
L. Liu and R. Meersman. The building blocks for specifying communication behavior of complex objects: An activity-driven approach. ACM Transactions on Database Systems, 21 (2): 157–207, June 1996.
Sun Microsystems. Enterprise JavaBeans Technology. http://java.sun.com/products/ejb/index.html.
W. Rajput. E-Commerce Systems Architecture and Applications. Artech House Publishers, 2000.
R. Kalakota M. Robinson. e-Business: Roadmap for Success. Addison-Wesley, 1999.
G. Rossi, D. Schwabe, and F. Lyardet. Web application models are more than conceptual models. In P.P. Chen, D.W. Embley, and S.W. Liddle, editors, World Wide Web and Conceptual Modeling, pages 193–208, October 1999.
W3c. XML Path Language (XPath) Version 1.0 at http://www.w3.org/tr/xpath.html, 1999.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2003 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rodriguez, J.J., Diaz, O. (2003). Seamless Integration of Inquiry and Transactional Tasks in Web Applications. In: Meersman, R., Aberer, K., Dillon, T. (eds) Semantic Issues in E-Commerce Systems. IFIP - The International Federation for Information Processing, vol 111. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35658-7_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35658-7_7
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-1035-9
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-35658-7
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive