The World Wide Web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

 has become a major delivery platform for a variety of complex and sophisticated enterprise applications in several domains. In addition to their inherent multifaceted functionality, these web applications exhibit complex behavior and place some unique demands on their usability, performance, security and ability to grow and evolve. However, a vast majority of these applications continue to be developed in an ad-hoc way, contributing to problems of usability, maintainability, quality and reliability. While web development can benefit from established practices from other related disciplines, it has certain distinguishing characteristics that demand special considerations. In the recent years, there have been some developments towards addressing these problems and requirements. As an emerging discipline, web engineering actively promotes systematic, disciplined and quantifiable approaches towards successful development of high-quality, ubiquitously usable web-based systems and applications. In particular, web engineering focuses on the methodologies, techniques and tools that are the foundation of web application development and which support their design, development, evolution, and evaluation. Web application development has certain characteristics that make it different from traditional software, information system, or computer application development.

Web engineering is multidisciplinary and encompasses contributions from diverse areas: systems analysis and design

Systems analysis and design

Systems Analysis and Design is an interdisciplinary part of science, which can related to:* Systems analysis* Systems designAnd to related types:* Object-oriented analysis and design* Service-oriented analysis and design* Structured analysis...

, software engineering, hypermedia/hypertext engineering, requirements engineering, human-computer interaction, user interface, information engineering, information indexing and retrieval, testing, modelling and simulation, project management, and graphic design and presentation. Web engineering is neither a clone, nor a subset of software engineering, although both involve programming and software development. While web Engineering uses software engineering principles, it encompasses new approaches, methodologies, tools, techniques, and guidelines to meet the unique requirements of web-based application

Web application

A web application is an application that is accessed over a network such as the Internet or an intranet. The term may also mean a computer software application that is coded in a browser-supported language and reliant on a common web browser to render the application executable.Web applications are...

s.

Web engineering as a discipline

Proponents of web engineering supported the establishment of web engineering as a discipline at an early stage of web. First Workshop on Web Engineering was held in conjunction with World Wide Web Conference held in Brisbane, Australia, in 1998. San Murugesan, Yogesh Deshpande, Steve Hansen and Athula Ginige, from University of Western Sydney, Australia formally promoted web engineering a new discipline in the first ICSE workshop on Web Engineering in 1999. Since then they published a serial of papers in a number of journals, conferences and magazines to promote their view and got wide support. Major arguments for web engineering as a new discipline are:

• Web-based Information Systems (WIS) development process is different and unique.
• Web engineering is multi-disciplinary; no single discipline (such as software engineering) can provide complete theory basis, body of knowledge and practices to guide WIS development.
• Issues of evolution and lifecycle management when compared to more 'traditional' applications.
• Web based information systems and applications are pervasive and non-trivial. The prospect of web as a platform will continue to grow and it is worth being treated specifically.

However, it has been controversial, especially for people in other traditional disciplines such as software engineering, to recognize web engineering as a new field. The issue is how different and independent web engineering is, compared with other disciplines.

Main topics of Web engineering include, but are not limited to, the following areas:

Web Process & Project Management Disciplines

• Development Process and Process Improvement of Web Applications
• Web Project Management and Risk Management
• Collaborative Web Development.

Web Requirements Modeling Disciplines

• Business Processes for Applications on the Web
• Process Modelling of Web applications
• Requirements Engineering for Web applications

Web System Design Disciplines, Tools & Methods

• UML
  Unified Modeling Language
  Unified Modeling Language is a standardized general-purpose modeling language in the field of object-oriented software engineering. The standard is managed, and was created, by the Object Management Group...
  
   and the Web
• Conceptual Modeling of Web Applications (aka. Web modeling
  Web modeling
  Web modeling is a branch of Web engineering which addresses the specific issues related to design and development of large-scale Web applications...
  
  )
• Prototyping Methods and Tools
• Web design
  Web design
  Web design is the process of planning and creating a website. Text, images, digital media and interactive elements are used by web designers to produce the page seen on the web browser...
  
   methods
• CASE Tools for Web Applications
• Web Interface Design
• Data Models for Web Information Systems

Web System Implementation Disciplines

• Integrated Web Application Development Environments
• Code Generation for Web Applications
• Software Factories for/on the Web
• Web 2.0, AJAX, E4X, Asp.net2.0,Asp.net3.0 and Other New Developments
• Web Service
  Web service
  A Web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over the web.The W3C defines a "Web service" as "a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network". It has an interface described in a machine-processable format...
  
  s Development and Deployment
• Empirical Web Engineering

Web System Testing Disciplines

• Testing and Evaluation of Web systems and Applications
• Testing Automation, Methods and Tools

Web Applications Categories Disciplines

• Semantic Web
  Semantic Web
  The Semantic Web is a collaborative movement led by the World Wide Web Consortium that promotes common formats for data on the World Wide Web. By encouraging the inclusion of semantic content in web pages, the Semantic Web aims at converting the current web of unstructured documents into a "web of...
  
   applications
• Ubiquitous and Mobile Web Applications
• Mobile Web Application Development
• Device Independent Web Delivery
• Localization and Internationalization Of Web Applications

Web Quality Attributes Disciplines

• Web Metrics, Cost Estimation, and Measurement
• Personalisation and Adaptation of Web applications
• Web Quality
• Usability of Web Applications
  Web usability
  Web usability is the application of usability in those domains where web browsing can be considered as a general paradigm for constructing a GUI.-General:...
  
  
• Web accessibility
  Web accessibility
  Web accessibility refers to the inclusive practice of making websites usable by people of all abilities and disabilities. When sites are correctly designed, developed and edited, all users can have equal access to information and functionality...
  
  
• Performance of Web-based applications

Content-related Disciplines

• Web Content Management
• Multimedia
  Multimedia
  Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
  
   Authoring Tools and Software
• Authoring of adaptive hypermedia
  Authoring of adaptive hypermedia
  -Definition:Authoring of Adaptive hypermedia comprises the design and creation process of adaptive hypermedia: creation of content and adaptive behaviour -Definition:Authoring of Adaptive hypermedia (AH) comprises the design and creation process of adaptive hypermedia: creation of content...
  
  

Web Engineering Resources

Organizations

• International Society for Web Engineering e.V.: http://www.iswe-ev.de/
• Web Engineering Community: http://www.webengineering.org
• WISE Society: http://www.wisesociety.org/
• ACM SIGWEB: http://www.acm.org/sigweb
• World Wide Web Consortium: http://www.w3.org

Books

• "Engineering Web Applications", by Sven Casteleyn, Florian Daniel, Peter Dolog and Maristella Matera, Springer, 2009, ISBN 978-3540922001
• "Handbook of Research on Web 2.0, 3.0, and X.0: Technologies, Business, and Social Applications", San Murugesan (Editor), Information Science Research, Hershey – New York, October 2009, ISBN 978-1-60566-384-5
• "Web Engineering: Modelling and Implementing Web Applications", edited by Gustavo Rossi, Oscar Pastor, Daniel Schwabe and Luis Olsina, Springer Verlag HCIS, 2007, ISBN 978-1-84628-922-4
• "Cost Estimation Techniques for Web Projects", Emilia Mendes, IGI Publishing, ISBN 978-1-59904-135-3
• "Web Engineering - The Discipline of Systematic Development of Web Applications", edited by Gerti Kappel, Birgit Pröll, Siegfried Reich, and Werner Retschitzegger, John Wiley & Sons, 2006
• "Web Engineering", edited by Emilia Mendes and Nile Mosley, Springer-Verlag, 2005
• "Web Engineering: Principles and Techniques", edited by Woojong Suh, Idea Group Publishing, 2005
• "Building Web Applications with UML" (2nd edition), by Jim Conallen, Pearson Education, 2003
• "Information Architecture for the World Wide Web" (2nd edition), by Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld, O'Reilly, 2002
• "Web Site Engineering: Beyond Web Page Design", by Thomas A. Powell, David L. Jones and Dominique C. Cutts, Prentice Hall, 1998
• "Designing Data-Intensive Web Applications", by S. Ceri, P. Fraternali, A. Bongio, M. Brambilla, S. Comai, M. Matera. Morgan Kaufmann Publisher, Dec 2002, ISBN 1-55860-843-5

Conferences

• World Wide Web Conference (by IW3C2, since 1994): http://www.iw3c2.org
• International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE) (since 2000)
  • 2007: http://www.icwe2007.org/
  • 2006: http://www.icwe2006.org
  • 2005: http://www.icwe2005.org
  • 2004: http://www.icwe2004.org
• ICWE Conference Proceedings
  • ICWE2007: LNCS 4607 http://www.springer.com/computer/database+management+&+information+retrieval/book/978-3-540-73596-0
  • ICWE2005: LNCS 3579 http://www.springer.com/east/home/generic/search/results?SGWID=5-40109-22-58872076-0
  • ICWE2004: LNCS 3140 http://www.springer.com/east/home/generic/search/results?SGWID=5-40109-22-32445543-0
  • ICWE2003: LNCS 2722 http://www.springer.com/east/home/generic/search/results?SGWID=5-40109-22-3092664-0
• Web Information Systems Engineering Conference (by WISE Society, since 2000): http://www.wisesociety.org/
• International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies (WebIST) (since 2005): http://www.webist.org/
• International Workshop on Web Site Evolution (WSE): http://www.websiteevolution.org/
• International Conference on Software Engineering: http://www.icse-conferences.org/

Book Chapters and Articles

• Murugesan,S and A.Ginige, A. "Web Engineering: Introduction and Perspectives", Chapter 1 in "Web Engineering: Principles and Techniques" (Suh, W. ed.), Idea Group Publishing, 2005. http://www.idea-group.com/downloads/excerpts/01%20Suh.pdf
• Pressman, R.S., 'Applying Web Engineering', Part 3, Chapters 16-20, in Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Perspective, Sixth Edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2004. http://www.rspa.com/'

Journals

• Journal of Web Engineering: http://www.rintonpress.com/journals/jwe/
• International Journal of Web Engineering and Technology: http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=48
• ACM Transactions on Internet Technology: http://www.acm.org/pubs/periodicals/toit/
• World Wide Web (Kluwer Academic Publishers): http://www.kluweronline.com/issn/1386-145X
• Web coding journal: http://www.web-code.org/
• International Journal of Web Engineering and Web Information Systems: http://focit2.intimal.edu.my/~IJWEWIS/

Special issues

• Web Engineering, IEEE MultiMedia, Jan.–Mar. 2001 (Part 1) and April–June 2001 (Part 2). http://csdl2.computer.org/persagen/DLPublication.jsp?pubtype=m&acronym=mu
• Usability Engineering, IEEE Software, January–February 2001.
• Web Engineering, Cutter IT Journal, 14(7), July 2001.*
• Testing E-business Applications, Cutter IT Journal, September 2001.
• Engineering Internet Software, IEEE Software, March–April 2002.
• Usability and the Web, IEEE Internet Computing, March–April 2002.