A Data-Model Driven Web Application Development Framework

Abstract

Model-driven approach for web application development is an important topic in software engineering. There are many existing tools to support model-driven engineering for web application development. However, most tools and techniques are complex and not very practical when it comes to real-life usage. Here we present a simple data model-driven approach for web application development that is based on RDF data model, the basic semantic Web data model, and its reasoning capabilities. We introduce a prototype implementation of the data model-driven Web application development framework that utilizes semantic Web technologies in the backend for the data model. In this framework, the design and development of the application is focused on the RDF data model and its reasoning logic (partially). Developers define the data model online using a Web application front-end and the framework generates different views of the data elements automatically. This enables the developers to change the data model easily whenever it is needed. Copyright 2014 ACM.