TABLE OF CONTENTS Developing a Web application, as with any other kind of software system, is a complex achievement that requires the ability to master a broad spectrum of tasks, jointly performed by a number of persons with different skills. Following a well-organized development process, centered on the appropriate modeling concepts, is essential to overcome the complexity inherent to such kind of development.
The goal of this chapter is not to invent yet another software development lifecycle, but to examine how the classic incremental and iterative development process advocated by the modern software engineering methodologies can be adapted to the specificity of data-intensive Web applications. To this end, this chapter provides a breakdown of the development activity, which matches the requirements of data-intensive Web applications, builds upon appropriate notations and concepts for data and hypertext modeling, enforces the separation between the different aspects of structure, navigation, and presentation, and lends itself to be automated by C.A.S.E. (Computer Aided Software Engineering) tools. In this introductory chapter the development process is observed from several viewpoints: the expected inputs and outputs, the involved actors, and the development phases that compose the application lifecycle. The next chapters will zoom into the most relevant activities, and will show the proposed development process at work.
Figure 6.1 shows the fundamental inputs and outputs of the development process of a data intensive Web...
