Hypertext Semantics for Web Applications

Web applications integrate dynamic pages for publishing data, functions for content management, and generic business services. To support the model-driven design and automatic generation of Web applications, an extended notion of hypertext is required, whose semantics is scarcely investigated. In this paper, we analyse and classify the semantic problems encountered in the computation of Web pages, characterised by multiple interrelated pieces of content, inter-page and intra-page navigation, and content update operations. The identified semantic framework may help in better understanding the existing Web conceptual models, and in reasoning at a higher level about the implementation problems daily faced by Web developers.