Refactoring to Rich Internet Applications. A Model-Driven Approach

Rich Internet applications (RIAs) combine the simplicity of the hypertext paradigm with the flexibility of desktop interfaces. The quick emergence of these applications is driving a new (r)evolution in the Webfield. Building RIAs from scratch is often unfeasible because companies do not want to loose their investments in legacy Web software; additionally, most users are still accustomed to the "old" Web interaction style. In this paper we present an evolutionary approach to transform conventional Web software into RIAs; we show how to apply the well known refactoring concept to seamless introduce rich interface functionality in a Web application. By applying refactoring at the model level, we make the transition more systematic and less prone to error. We briefly introduce the problem with a simple example, and then we describe two refactorings and present our approach to specify these refactorings at the interface design level.