Towards a Model-Driven Approach for Process-Aware Web Applications

Model-driven methods are always welcome when developing complex applications. Their availability is usually related to the problem domain that has to be addressed and to the software architectures that have to be supported. Process-aware Web applications are arguably the prominent examples of applications in which multi-user, coordinated work takes place and are, as the web evolves towards a Business System, strongly emerging as one of the main types of Web-applications. In this article we propose a model-driven approach to process-aware Web applications based on a graphical process modeling and execution language that eases the development process (from the design to the implementation) by promoting an effective separation of concerns. Driven by an emerging class of applications, the Web is evolving into a Business System. Web-based business applications allow the participation of several actors to complex enterprise-wide (or even multi-enterprise) business processes and pose new challenges to the software designers and software architects. The design models have to address both navigational and process-based interactions; the software architecture has to provide the components to enact the process and has to define how these components interoperate with the other components of the Web applications. In this paper we show how, promoting an effective separation of concerns, a process modeling language and its enactment engine can be used in the modeling and implementation of process-aware Web applications.