A View Behind the Scene: Data Structures and Software Architecture of a VAA

In today´s rapidly evolving and growing online community many different applications are proposed and implemented. One category of such applications that drew high attention during the last few years are the so-called Voting Advice Applications (VAAs). VAAs are online systems used during elections that allow voters to create a political profile, the comparison of this profile with the profiles of political parties and candidates provides the voter with an estimation of his/her proximity to parties and candidates. In this paper, the data structure and the software architecture used for implementing a VAA platform along with its technical requirements are presented. Furthermore, a novel approach used for supporting multi-lingual content is described.