A Pattern-Based Development Approach for Interaction Flow Modeling Language

Abstract EN

Development and deployment technologies for data-intensive web applications have considerably evolved in the last years.

Domain-specific frameworks or model-driven web engineering approaches are examples of these technologies.

They have made possible to face implicit problems of these systems such as quick evolving business rules or severe time-to-market requirements.

Both approaches propose the automation of redundant development tasks as the key factor for their success.

The implementation of CRUD operations is a clear example of repetitive and recurrent task that may be automated.

However, although web application frameworks have provided mechanisms to automate the implementation of CRUD operations, model-driven web engineering approaches have generally ignored them, so automation has not been properly faced yet.

This paper presents a pattern-based development approach for the Interaction Flow Modeling Language as a way to finally automate repetitive specification tasks.

Our approach is illustrated by defining and applying IFML patterns for CRUD operations.

Additionally, a supporting tool, which enables automation, is shown.

The suitability of our approach and the utility of its tool have been evaluated by its application into several real projects developed by a software company specialized in model-driven web application development.

The results obtained present evidence of a significant productivity improvement obtained by the automation of the IFML specification of CRUD operations.