Automated Analysis and Evaluation of Web Applications Design: The CMS-based Web Applications Case Study

This paper addresses the automated design quality evaluation of Web applications built on a CMS platform by inspecting their conceptual model under the viewpoint of consistent design reuse. We have utilized WebML as the design platform of the proposed methodology and we attempt to capture design reuse by detecting all the recurrent patterns within the WebML hypertext model of an application. A pattern consists of a core specification, i.e., an invariant composition of WebML elements that characterizes the pattern and by a number of pattern variants which extend the core specification with all the valid modalities in which the pattern composition can start (starting variants) or terminate (termination variants). We have developed a methodology that automatically extracts the hypertext model of a web application which is subsequently submitted to a pattern-based analysis in order to identify the occurrences of all the incorporated recurrent patterns implying design reuse. Then, we calculate evaluation metrics revealing whether the identified patterns variants are used consistently throughout the application. By using the methodology, designers can detect either effective reusable design solutions consistently used throughout the application model for obtaining certain functionality within the application’s context or recurrent design constructs causing design inconsistencies and lowering the quality of the final application.