• Garrido, A., Rossi, G., Distante, D. "Refactoring for Usability in Web Applications". IEEE Software, IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA, USA 2010 (to appear)

• Bernardi, M.L., Di Lucca, G., A., Distante, D. "Improving the Design of Existing Web Applications". 7th International Conference on the Quality of Information and Communications Technology (QUATIC'2010; 27 Sept. - 02 Oct. 2010; Oporto, Portugal). IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA, USA, 2010 (to appear).

• Scanniello, G., Distante, D., Risi, M., "An Approach and an Eclipse Based Environment for Enhancing the Navigation Structure of Web Sites". International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer (STTT), Special Section on Web Systems Evolution. ISSN 1433-2779. Springer Berlin / Heidelber. 2009

  This paper presents an approach based on information retrieval and clustering techniques for automatically enhancing the navigation structure of a Web site for improving navigability. The approach increments the set of navigation links provided in each page of the site with a semantic navigation map, i.e., a set of links enabling navigating from a given page to other pages of the site showing similar or related content. The approach uses Latent Semantic Indexing to compute a dissimilarity measure between the pages of the site and a graph-theoretic clustering algorithm to group pages showing similar or related content according to the calculated dissimilarity measure. AJAX code is finally used to extend each Web page with an associated semantic navigation map. The paper also presents a prototype of a tool developed to support the approach and the results from a case study conducted to assess the validity and feasibility of the proposal.

• Bernardi, M.,L., Di Lucca, G.,A., Distante, D. "The RE-UWA Approach to Recover User Centered Conceptual Models from Web Applications". International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer (STTT), Special Section on Web Systems Evolution. ISSN 1433-2779. Springer Berlin / Heidelber. 2009

  Large-scale Web Applications, especially those intended to publish contents and provide information to its users, are by nature subject to continuous and fast changes. This often means fast obsolescence of the design documentation and a lot of effort required to comprehend the application when performing maintenance and evolution tasks. This paper presents a reverse engineering approach for Web Applications enabling the semi-automatic recovery of user-centered conceptual models describing, from a user perspective, key aspects, such as the delivered contents and navigational paths. The abstracted models are formalized according to the Ubiquitous Web Applications (UWA) design methodology, but any other design method for Web Applications could be used instead. The paper describes the recovery process, a tool developed to support the process, and the results from a case study conducted to validate the approach on a set of real world Web Applications.

• Distante, D., Risi, M., Scanniello, G. "An Eclipse Plug-in to Enhance the Navigation Structure of Web Sites". In Proceedings of the fourth Italian Workshop on Eclipse Technologies 2009. (Eclipse-IT 2009; Sept. 28-29, 2009; Bergamo - Italy). http://ceur-ws.org/, ISSN 1613-0073

  This paper presents a process and a tool developed as an Eclipse plug-in for automatically enhancing the navigation structure of Web sites. The process extends each page of a site with a Semantic Navigation Map, i.e., a set of links connecting the page to other pages of the site showing similar or related content. The process uses Latent Semantic Indexing to compute a dissimilarity measure between the pages of the site, a graph theoretic clustering algorithm to identify groups of pages with similar or semantically related content, and AJAX code to extend each page with the corresponding Semantic Navigation Map. Semantic navigation maps for a given Web site are recovered once and kept up to date as new pages are added to the site or content of existing pages is updated. Additionally to presenting the process, the underlying techniques and the tool supporting the process, the paper also presents the results obtained from a case study involving three real world Web sites.

• Garrido, A.s, Rossi, G., and Distante, D. "Systematic Improvement of Web Applications Design", Journal of Web Engineering, Special Issue on Web Application Evolutions, Vol. 8, No4 pp. 371-404 (2009) © Rinton Press. 2009.

  Web applications are usually characterized by a rapid development process and continuous evolution. This evolution implies growth of the graph of pages and navigation paths, as well as new functionality and new data made available to the user. Measurement of the system usability, periodic or after a time of growth, is crucial to the system's evolution in the line of design maturity and to prevent the system from decay. This kind of evolution is one of the main practices of agile methods, in which design improvement occurs daily during development and often during maintenance. In this paper we propose a list of changes for the design models of a Web application and when they may be applied, in order to improve the application's usability while preserving its functionality. The purpose of the proposed changes is to improve the maturity of the design instead of adding new features; we call them Web design improvements. This paper starts a catalogue of Web design improvements for the navigation and presentation models of a Web application. Since changing these models has direct impact on the user experience with the application, our Web design improvements aim at improving the external quality and user experience

• Ginzburg, J., Distante, D., Rossi, G., Ubierta, M. “Oblivious Integration of Volatile Functionality in Web Application Interfaces”, Journal of Web Engineering, Special Issue on Design of Sophisticated Web-based Systems, Vol. 8, No.1 (2009) 025-047 © Rinton Press. 2009.

  Web applications are used to fast and continuous evolution. In response to new or changing requirements, additional code is developed and existing one is properly modified. When new requirements are temporary, i.e., when they specify some volatile functionality that is expected to be online only for some time and then removed, the additions and changes are destined to be later rolled back. This way to proceed, apart from being time and effort demanding, by involving the intrusive editing of the application’s source code, brings along the risk of polluting it and introducing mistakes. In this paper, we present an approach to deal with volatile functionality in Web applications at the presentation level, based on oblivious composition of Web user interfaces. Our approach, which is inspired by well-known techniques for advanced separation of concerns such as aspect-oriented software design, allows to clearly separate the design of the application’s core user interface from the one corresponding to more volatile functionality. Both core and volatile user interfaces are oblivious from each other and can be seamlessly composed using a transformation language. We show that in this way we simplify the application’s evolution by preventing intrusive edition of the user interface code. Using some illustrative examples, we focus both on design and implementation issues, presenting an extension of the OOHDM design model that supports modular design of volatile functionality.

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• Gustavo Rossi, Matias Urbieta, Jeronimo Ginzburg, Damiano Distante, and Alejandra Garrido "Refactoring to Rich Internet Applications. A Model-Driven Approach", 8th International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE 2008; July 14-18, 2008; Yorktown Heights, NJ), pp. 1-12. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press, 2008.

  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 Web field. 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 wellknown 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.

• Scanniello, G. , Distante, D., Risi, M.: "Using Semantic Clustering to Enhance the Navigation Structure of Web Sites". In Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Web Site Evolution (WSE 2008: Oct. 03-04, 2008; Beijing, China). pp. 55-64. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press, 2008.

  The Ubiquitous Web Applications (UWA) Hyperbase model is a user-centered conceptual model representing the contents of a Web application, their organization in terms of entities and components, and the semantic associations between entities from which navigation paths are derived. Such a model may provide useful support for the software engineer during maintenance and evolution tasks. This paper presents a strategy for the semi-automatic abstraction of UWA Hyperbase models from existing Web applications. The results from a case study, involving four applications from real world, carried out to assess the effectiveness of the strategy are also presented and discussed.

• Bernardi, M. L., Di Lucca, G. A., Distante, D.: "Reverse Engineering of Web Applications to Abstract User-Centered Conceptual Models". In Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Web Site Evolution (WSE 2008: Oct. 03-04, 2008; Beijing, China). pp. 101-110. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press, 2008.

  The Ubiquitous Web Applications (UWA) Hyperbase model is a user-centered conceptual model representing the contents of a Web application, their organization in terms of entities and components, and the semantic associations between entities from which navigation paths are derived. Such a model may provide useful support for the software engineer during maintenance and evolution tasks. This paper presents a strategy for the semi-automatic abstraction of UWA Hyperbase models from existing Web applications. The results from a case study, involving four applications from real world, carried out to assess the effectiveness of the strategy are also presented and discussed.

• Distante, D., Tilley, S., Bolchini, D., Dean, T. (guest editors) Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution: Research and Practice. Special Issue from the 8th IEEE Symposium on Web Site Evolution. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2007.

• Distante, D., Rossi, G., Canfora, G., and Tilley, S. “A Comprehensive Design Model for Integrating Business Processes in Web Applications”. In International Journal of Web Engineering and Technology (IJWET), Vol. 2, Issue 1, 2007, pp 43-72. Inderscience Publishers, 2007.

  Web applications have evolved from simple read-only websites to complex data- and operation-intensive systems. The main goal of this kind of application is to provide the users with services that assist them in carrying out activities according to a given set of business rules. The addition of transactions to modern web applications poses new challenges, such as managing the interplay between business process execution and navigation, and improving the user's experience in accessing the services that the web application offers. This paper presents a comprehensive design model for integrating business processes in web applications. The model is based on UWAT+, an extended and revised version of the Ubiquitous Web Applications (UWA) Transaction Design model for designing web transactions. UWAT+ makes it possible to design web application transactions according to the user's perspective and to integrate the web transaction design with the information and navigation design of the web application.

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• Olsina, L., Rossi, G., Garrido, A., Distante, D., Canfora, G.: "Incremental Quality Improvement in Web Applications Using Web Model Refactoring". In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Web Usability and Accessibility (IWWUA 2007). In conjuntion with the 8th International Conference on Web Information Systems Engineering (WISE 2007; December 3-7, 2007; Nancy, France). Lecture Notes in Computer Science series, Springer-Verlag publisher, 2007.

  Web applications must be usable and accessible; besides, they evolve at a fast pace and it is difficult to sustain a high degree of external quality. Agile methods and continuous refactoring are well-suited for the rapid development of Web applications since they particularly support continuous evolution. However, the purpose of traditional refactorings is to improve internal quality, like maintainability of design and code, rather than usability of the application. We have defined Web model refactorings as transformations on the navigation and presentation models of a Web application. In this paper, we demonstrate how Web model refactorings can improve the usability of a Web application by using a mature quality evaluation approach (WebQEM) to assess the impact of refactoring on some defined attributes of a Web product entity. We present a case study showing how a shopping cart in an e-commerce site can improve its usability by applying Web model refactorings.

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• Garrido, A., Rossi, G., and Distante, D.: "Model Refactoring in Web Applications". In Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Web Site Evolution (WSE 2007: Oct. 05-06, 2007; Paris, France). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press, 2007.

  Refactoring has been growing in importance with recent software engineering approaches, particularly agile methodologies, which promote continuous improvement of an application’s code and design. Web applications are especially suitable for refactoring because of their rapid development and continuous evolution. Refactoring is about applying transformations that preserve program behavior. Code refactorings apply transformations to the source code while model refactorings apply to design models, both with the purpose of increasing internal qualities like maintainability and extensibility. In this paper we propose Web model refactorings as transformations that apply to the design models of a Web application. Particularly, we define refactorings on the navigation and presentation models, and present examples. Since changing these models impacts on what the user perceives, the intent of Web model refactorings is to improve external qualities like usability. They may also help to introduce Web patterns in a Web application.

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• Distante, D., Pedone, P., Rossi, G., Canfora, G. "Model-Driven Development of Web Applications with UWA, MVC and JavaServer Faces." 7th International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE2007: July 16-20, 2007; Como, Italy).

  This paper presents a model-driven approach to the development of web applications based on the Ubiquitous Web Application (UWA) design framework, the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern and the JavaServer Faces technology. The approach combines a complete and robust methodology for the user-centered conceptual design of web applications with the MVC metaphor, which improves separation of business logic and data presentation. The proposed approach, by carrying the advantages of Model-Driven Development (MDD) and user-centered design, produces Web applications which are of high quality from the user's point of view and easier to maintain and evolve.

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• Rossi, G., Ginzburg, J., Urbieta, M., Distante, D. "Transparent Interface Composition in Web Applications." 7th International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE2007: July 16-20, 2007; Como, Italy). Awarded for the Best Paper at ICWE 2007.

  In this paper we present an approach for oblivious composition of Web user interfaces, particularly for volatile functionality. Our approach, which is inspired on well-known techniques for advanced separation of concerns such as aspect-oriented software design, allows to clearly separate the design of the core’s interface from the one corresponding to more volatile services, i.e. those that are offered for short periods of time. Both interfaces are oblivious from each other and can be seamlessly composed using a transformation language. We show that in this way we simplify the application’s evolution by preventing intrusive edition of the interface code. Using some illustrative examples we focus both on design and implementation issues, presenting an extension of the OOHDM design model which support modular design of volatile functionality.

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• Distante, D., Huang, S. "Challenges and Lessons Learned in Teaching Software Engineering Programming to Hearing Impaired Students." In Proceedings of The 20th Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEE&T 2007: July 3-5, 2007; Dublin, Ireland).

  Teaching academic courses to students with disabilities is a challenging task, particularly for academics who are presented with the teaching requirements and needs that this implies, for the first time. Courses in the field of engineering and computer science, by requiring a lot of hands-on practices and teamwork, further exacerbate the situation as how to provide an effective learning experience for these disabled students. This situation requires a higher-level commitment than normal, from both the teachers and students. This paper presents the experience gained from teaching courses that involved hearing impaired students of an undergraduate software engineering and a programming language course in two different universities. Some of the challenges faced by both instructors and the students are identified and some possible solutions are described.

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• Distante D., Rossi, G., and Canfora, G. "Modeling Business Processes in Web Applications: An Analysis Framework." In Proceedings of the The 22nd Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC 2007: March 11 - 15, 2007, Seoul, Korea). ACM Press: New York, NY, 2007.

  The addition of business processes to modern web applications entails new challenges to be faced when developing them, hence the need for suitable methodologies to be adopted in the design phase. In response to this need, most of the design methodologies for web application available in the literature include a proper solution. In this paper we propose a framework for analyzing and comparing web application design methodologies with regard to their support for modeling business processes. The analysis framework has proved to be useful for assessing the ability of each considered methodology to deal with the design of business processes in web applications. The framework also provides suggestions on how to possibly enhance a given methodology.

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• Bolchini, D., Dean, T., and Distante, D. (editors). Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Web Site Evolution (WSE 2006: September 23-24, 2006; Philadelphia, PA-USA). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press, 2006.

• Aversano, L., Bruno, M., Canfora, G., Di Penta, M., and Distante, D. “Using Concept Lattices to Support Service Selection”. In International Journal of Web Services Research, 3(4), 32-51, October-December 2006 (JWSR). Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing, 2006.

  When building a service-oriented system, a service integrator retrieves a set of potentially useful services from registries and then inspects their documentation to eventually decide which services to use. This task needs to be supported by proper tools that help service interface/documentation understanding, highlighting the relationships existing between the retrieved services. This paper proposes an approach, based on Formal Concept Analysis, to understand relationships between services, as well as between operations of a complex service, by analyzing service interfaces and documentation. The approach allows an analyst to cluster similar services, highlights hierarchical relationships and, in general, commonalities and differences between services. To support the proposed approach, we developed a tool that provides several service browsing capabilities. Finally, the approach has been evaluated with different case studies built upon real sets of services.

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• Di Lucca, G., A., Distante, D., Bernardi, M., L. "Recovering Conceptual Models from Web Applications." In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Design of Communication (SIGDOC 2006: October 25-27, 2006, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, USA). ACM Press: New York, NY, 2006.

  This paper proposes a reverse engineering approach for abstracting conceptual user-centered models from existing Web applications to re-document them at a high level of abstraction and from a user perspective. The recovered models are specified by referring to the Ubiquitous Web Application (UWA) design methodology. UWA models are able to describe the structure of the application contents, the semantic relations among contents, the different views on contents the application offers to users, and the navigation paths and the navigation nodes used to present contents to users. The approach exploits existing reverse engineering methods and tools to extract fine grained structural information from the analyzed applications and abstracts UWA models from them. The architecture of a tool to support the reverse engineering approach is described and the results from some preliminary experiments are discussed.

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• Rossi, G., Nieto, A., Mengoni, L., Lofeudo, N., Nuño, L. S., and Distante, D. "Model-Based Design of Volatile Functionality in Web Applications." In Proceedings of the 4th Latin American Web Congress, (LA-WEB 2006: October 18–20, 2006, Puebla Cholula, Mexico). IEEE Computer Society, 2006.

  In this paper we present a model-based approach to integrate dynamic and volatile functionality in Web Applications. Our approach comprises an extension to the OOHDM design method and a software framework which supports the injection of volatile functionality into the design model. We first motivate our work by discussing the problems which arise when dealing with volatile functionality; some meaningful examples are presented. We briefly describe our design approach, showing how to decouple volatile functionality from the core design model. We finally describe an implementation framework which supports the presented ideas extending Apache Struts with the notion of services and service affinities. Finally, we compare our approach with others’ and present some further research we are pursuing.

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• Distante, D., Tilley, S., Canfora, G., Huang, S."Redesigning Legacy Applications for the Web with UWAT+: A Case Study." In Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2006: May 20-28, 2006; Shanghai, China; pp 482-491)

  This paper reports on a case study of redesigning a legacy application for the Web using the Ubiquitous Web Applications Design Framework with an extended version of its Transaction Design Model (UWAT+). Web application design methodologies hold the promise of engineering high-quality and long-lived Web systems and rich Internet applications. However, many such techniques focus solely on green-field development, and do not properly address the situation of leveraging the value locked in legacy systems. The redesign process supported by UWAT+ holistically blends design recovery technologies for capturing the know-how embedded in the legacy application with forward design methods particularly well suited for Web-based systems. The case study highlights some of the benefits of using UWAT+ in this context, as well as identifying possible areas for improvement in the redesign process and opportunities for tool automation to support it.

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• Huang, S. and Distante, D. "On Practice-Oriented Software Engineering Education." In Proceedings of the 19th Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training Workshops (CSEETW 2006: April 18-21, 2006; Turtle Bay, North Shore Oahu, Hawaii)

  The old saying “practice makes perfect” has been proven to be true in many fields when training new people to master the skills needed for a particular domain. It is even truer for software engineering education. Software engineering, by and large, is the application of engineering to software. Unlike other disciplines in the computer sciences, only by coupling theory and practice can students (who usually lack real-world working experience) understand some of the abstract concepts and principles taught in software engineering courses. This paper summarizes our experience in teaching software engineering courses in two different universities using a practice-oriented approach that guides students through learning the different, and yet abstract, aspects of the software engineering process.

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• Distante, D. Tilley, S., Canfora, G."Towards a Holistic Approach to Redesigning Legacy Applications for the Web with UWA and UWAT+." In Proceedings of the The 10th European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering (CSMR 2006: March 22-24, 2006; Bari, Italy) pp. 295-299.

  Web applications design methodologies hold the promise of engineering high-quality and long-lived Web systems and rich Internet applications. However, many such methodologies focus solely on green-field development, and do not properly address the situation of leveraging the value locked in legacy systems. This paper proposes a holistic approach to redesigning legacy applications for the Web using the Ubiquitous Web Applications Design Framework (UWA) and an extended version of its Transaction Design Model (UWAT+). The approach blends design recovery technologies for capturing the know-how embedded in the legacy application with forward design methods particularly well suited for Web-based systems.

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• Huang, S., Tilley, S., VanHilst, M., and Distante, D. “Adoption-Centric Software Maintenance Process Improvement via Information Integration”. In Proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Software Technology and Engineering Practice (STEP 2005: September 24-25, 2005; Budapest, Hungary). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press, 2006.

  Software process improvement is an iterative activity, normally involving measurement, analysis, and change. For most organizations, the existing software process has substantial momentum and is seemingly immovable. Any change to existing process activities causes turbulence in the organization, which can be a significant barrier to adoption of the quality improvement initiative. This paper presents a quiescent, non-invasive, and adoption-centric approach to process improvement for software maintenance. The approach realizes the goal of improving the efficiency of existing processes by minimizing changes to existing workflows and focusing on integrating enhancements at the microlevel of the system. By leveraging information buried in existing data, making it explicit, and integrating the results with known facts, more informed decision-making is made possible. The approach is illustrated with a model problem concerning redocumentation of an embedded control system in the context of performing higher-quality software maintenance.

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• Bennett, K., Distante, D., and Tortorella, M. “Evolution of Software Systems in a Business Context”. Workshop Report. In Proceedings of the 13th International Workshop on Software Technology and Engineering Practice (STEP 2005: September 24-25, 2005; Budapest, Hungary). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press, 2006.

• Distante, D. (editor). Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Web Site Evolution (WSE 2005: September 26, 2005; Budapest, Hungary). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press, 2005.

• Tilley, S., Distante, D., and Huang, S. "Design Recovery of Web Application Transactions". In Advances in Software Evolution with UML and XML (Editor: Hongji Yang). Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing, May 2005.

  Modern Web sites provide applications that are increasingly built to support the execution of business processes. In such a transaction-oriented Web site, the user executes a series of activities in order to carry out a specific task (e.g., purchase an airplane ticket). The manner in which the activities can be executed is a consequence of the transaction design. Unfortunately, many Web sites are constructed without proper attention to transaction design. The result is a system with unpredictable workflow and a lower-quality user experience. This chapter presents an example of the recovery of the “as-is” design model of a Web application transaction. The recovery procedure is prescriptive, suitable for implementation by a human subject-matter expert, possibly aided by reverse engineering technology. The recovered design is modeled using extensions to the transaction design portion of the UML-based Ubiquitous Web Applications (UWA) framework. Recovery facilitates future evolution of the Web site by making the transaction design explicit, which in turn enables engineers to make informed decisions about possible changes to the application. Design recovery of a commercial airline’s Web site is used to illustrate the process.

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• Colombo, M., Di Nitto, E., Di Penta, M., Distante, D., Zuccalà, M.: "Speaking a Common Language: A Conceptual Model for Describing Service-Oriented Systems." In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC 2005: December 12-15, 2005; Amsterdam, The Netherlands). Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 3826, Springer Ed., 2005.

  The diusion of service-oriented computing is today heavily in uencing many software development and research activities. Despite this, service-oriented computing is a relatively new eld, where many aspects still suer from a lack of standardization. Also, the service-oriented approach is bringing together researchers from dierent communities or from organizations having developed their own solutions. This introduces the need for letting all these people communicate with each other using a common language and a common understanding of the technologies they are using or building. This paper proposes a conceptual model that describes actors, activities and entities involved in a service-oriented scenario and the relationships between them. While being created for a European project, the model is easily adaptable to address the needs of any other service-oriented initiative.

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• Distante, D., Tilley, S.: "Conceptual Modeling of Web Application Transactions: Towards a Revised and Extended Version of the UWA Transaction Design Model." In Proceedings of the 11th International Multi-Media Modelling Conference (MMM2005: January 12-14, 2005; Melbourne, Australia). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press, 2005.

  Business Web applications are complex data- and operation-intensive Web applications intended to support business processes. In this kind of application, the user executes sets of activities organized into transactions (also generally called workflows) in order to accomplish one of his/her tasks or fulfill one of his/her goals. The way these transactions are structured, the properties associated with their component activities and the way each activity is implemented by the Web application are a consequence of the transaction design as well as the business rules implied by the business process. The Ubiquitous Web Applications (UWA) design framework explicitly includes a design activity and a related meta-model, called the Transaction Design Model, specifically focused on the conceptual design of Web application transactions (Web Transactions for short). This paper describes preliminary steps towards a revised and extended version of the UWA Transaction Design Model that emphasizes a usercentered approach, is easier to adopt and manages the information, navigation and operation aspects involved in a Web Transaction in a comprehensive and integrated way.

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• Distante, D., Tilley, S., Huang, S.: "Documenting Software Systems with Views IV: Documenting Web Transaction Design with UWAT+." In Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Design of Communication (SIGDOC2004: October 10-13, 2004; Memphis, TN). ACM Press: New York, NY, 2004, pp. 33-40.

  This paper describes an approach to documenting the conceptual design of Web Transactions using UWAT+. A Web Transaction is a collection of serial and/or parallel activities that contributes to achieving a user-oriented business objective using a Web-based application. UWAT+ is a meta-model for describing the various aspects of a Web Transaction in a holistic manner. It is an extension of the Transaction Design Model that is part of the Ubiquitous Web Applications (UWA) framework, a comprehensive framework for designing ubiquitous Web applications. A series of (extended) UML diagrams are used to graphically document the UWAT+ meta-model, which greatly facilitates adoption of the approach by practicing software engineers and technical writers. Use of the approach for documenting Web Transaction designs in both forward and reverse engineering processes is described.

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• Distante, D., Tilley, S., Huang, S.: "Web Site Evolution via Transaction Reengineering." In Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Web Site Evolution (WSE 2004: Sept. 11, 2004; Chicago, IL). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press, 2004.

  In a transaction-oriented Web site, the user executes a series of activities in order to carry out a specific task (e.g., purchase an airplane ticket). The manner in whichthe activities can be executed is a consequence of the transaction design, partially influenced by the constraints implied by the business model underlying the Web application. Unfortunately, many Web sites are constructed with the transaction design hidden in the overall system implementation. The result is a system with unpredictable workflow, which can make evolution difficult. This paper presents a technique for Web site evolution via transaction reengineering. The reengineering process consists of the recovery of the “as-is” design model of a Web application transaction, an analysis of the result to determine desirable restructuring options, and a redesign of the transaction model based on this analysis. The reengineering process relies on formalism that is a user-centered extension of the Transaction Design Model of the Ubiquitous Web Applications (UWA) framework. The goal of the reengineering process is to emerge with a transaction design that better reflects the user experience and also facilitates disciplined evolution of the Web-based application. An example from the travel industry is used to illustrate the process.

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• Distante, D., Parveen, T. and Tilley, S.: "Towards a Technique for Reverse Engineering Web Transactions from a User’s Perspective." In Proceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Program Comprehension (IWPC 2004: June 24-26, 2004; Bari, Italy). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press, 2004, pp. 142 - 150.

  Many Web sites could improve their users’ experience through systematic analysis of transaction paths, so that users’ expectations and site design are more closely aligned. This paper outlines preliminary steps towards a technique for reverse engineering Web transactions from a user’s perspective. The result of the reverse engineering activity is a conceptual model that is based on extensions to the transaction design portion of the Ubiquitous Web Applications (UWA) framework. In particular, changes to the definition of an “activity,” redefinitions of the “PropertySet” associated with an activity, and refinements to the UWA Organization and Execution models are proposed.

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• Distante, D., Bochicchio, M., Carducci, M., Longo, A., Fiore, N., et Al.: "Reducing Normative and Informative Asymmetries in Fiscal Management for Local Administrations: An Interdisciplinary Approach in the E-Government Perspective." (I3E 2003: 3rd IFIP Conference on E-Commerce, E-Business and E-Government; San Paulo, Brazil, September 2003).

  Fiscal incomes are vital for Governments, both for central and local agencies, therefore on-line fiscal services will play a key role in the e-Government perspective. The creation of citizen-centered fiscal e-services, however, requires a new citizen -centered institutional and juridical context to be effective. The current istitution-centered scenario, based on the authoritative approach, is in fact unaware about the active citizens’ role in the egovernment perspective, as well as about the deep impact of the information and communication technologies in the citizen s’ everyday life. The paper describes how the extensive application of the regulative approach can be synergic to the extensive adoption of information technologies and user centered e-services to reduce these “normative-informative asymmetries”. The proposed approach is discussed referring to the fiscal incomes management in Local Administrations and to a real e-government experience performed in Italy.

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• Distante, D., Bochicchio, M., Fiore, N., Negro, S.: "Intese, Innovative Technologies against Social Exclusion", AICA 2003, Trento, Italy, September 2003.

• Distante, D., Bochicchio, M., Perrone, V.: "Migration of Legacy Data Intensive Applications to the Web: The Sinfor Project." In Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Web Site Evolution (WSE 2002: October 2, 2002; Montréal, Canada), pp. 85-88. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press, 2002.

  Various approaches can be used to migrate legacy applications to the Web. In particular, migrating data -intensive legacy applications (e.g. traditional application for business management) needs methodological approach to face the challenges implied by the process. The Ubiquitous Web Applications (UWA) framework is one of the most innovative and complete framework for conceptual user centered modelling of a Web application. In this paper we describe the application of UWA to a real experience of reengineering a real legacy application for customer's order management.

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• Distante, D., Perrone, V.: "A Methodological Approach for the Migration of Legacy Data Intensive Applications to the Web." In Proceedings of the International Conference on Telecommunication, Electronics and Control. (Telec 2002, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, July 2002).

Workshop Position Papers

• Rossi, G., Gordillo, S., and Distante, D.: "Improving Web Applications Evolution by Separating Design Concerns." IEEE Software Technology and Engineering Practice 2005 (STEP 2005: September 24-25, 2005; Budapest, Hungary), Workshop on Evolution of Software Systems in a Business Context. 2005.
• Tilley, S. and Distante, D.: "On the Adoption of an Approach to Reengineering Web Application Transactions." 4th International Workshop on Adoption-Centric Software Engineering (ACSE 2004: May 25, 2004; Edinburgh, Scotland, UK), 2004.

Other Publications

• Distante, D., "Le soluzioni commerciali e organizzative per uno shopping mall", Report of the Innovation Engineering Department, University of Lecce, February 2002.
• Distante, D., "Lo schema HDM della Shopping Mall per le aziende del comparto tessile-abbigliamento salentino", Report of the Innovation Engineering Department, University of Lecce, February 2002.