Modeling Web applications using Java and XML related technologies

The purpose of this paper is to propose visual models for a Web application using Java and XML related technologies. We consider a Web application that uses 3-tier architecture and each tier is distributed onto Web, application, and data base servers. In the Web applications, various Java and XML related technologies are employed in the form of different languages: client-side script language, server-side script language, object-oriented programming language, markup language, style sheet language, data language, schema definition language, etc. When diverse technologies are applied to a Web application, software engineers need to understand how the components using the technologies are interrelated in terms of software architecture. By applying the RUP with UML to the Web application, we show how visual models can be constructed for the Web application. Even, we show that we can model components in the Web application using non object-oriented languages such as script, markup, style sheet, schema definition, and data languages. In order to compare the modeling complexity of components, we propose a degree of modeling complexity based upon two criteria - the degree of language dependency and the degree of location dependency. Through the comparison criteria, we try to quantify how relatively difficult it is for us to model which components. Based upon the degree of modeling complexity, it is relatively difficult to model XHTML among components using non object-oriented languages. Among Java related technologies, since JSP has a higher degree of language dependency and a higher degree of location dependency, it is more difficult for us to model the JSP components.