Building E-commerce applications from object-oriented conceptual models

ABSTRACT

This paper introduces an extension to UML that takes care of web page navigation using the OO-Method, dynamic prototyping, and a new way of specifying the navigation design. Furthermore, a software production process for e-commerce applications design is described. This process is driven by an Object-Oriented Web-Solutions Modeling approach (OOWS), which provides mechanisms to deal with the development of web-based applications. In the proposed process, a system is completely specified using object-oriented conceptual modeling techniques to capture properly the specific functionality of an e-commerce application. We place special emphasis on a navigational model that provides abstraction primitives to capture and represent navigational semantics. With such an extended conceptual model, system functionality and navigational features are described within a unified framework. Once the system specification is completed (problem space level), a strategy to obtain the software components that will constitute the final software product (solution space level) is defined. We briefly discuss how to map these abstraction primitives to e-commerce applications in order to be able to go from the problem space to the solution space in a structured, automated way.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.2 Design Tools and Techniques
          Subjects: Object-oriented design methods

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.1 Requirements/Specifications
          Subjects: Methodologies (e.g., object-oriented, structured)
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.2 Language Classifications

          Nouns: UML

  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.5 On-line Information Services
          Subjects: Web-based services
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.4 Hypertext/Hypermedia
          Subjects: Architectures; Navigation

General Terms:
Design, Languages, Management, Standardization

Keywords:
conceptual modeling, e-commerce, object-oriented