Structured Approach to Web Development

In today’s world of Web application development, programmers are commonly called upon to use the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) as a programming language, something for which it was never intended and for which it is woefully inadequate. HTML is a data language, nothing more. It lacks high level programming constructions like procedures, conditions, and loops. Moreover it provides no intrinsic mechanism to insert or associate dynamic application data. Lastly, despite the visibly apparent structure of a web page when viewed in a browser, the responsible HTML code bears little to no discernible corresponding structure, making it very difficult to read, augment, and maintain. This paper examines the various drawbacks inherent in HTML when used in Web development and examines the various augmenting technologies available in the industry today and their drawbacks. It then proposes an alternative, complete with the necessary constructs, structure, and data associating facilities based upon server-side, Extensible Stylesheet Language Transforms (XSLT). This alternative approach gives rise to an entirely new, higher level, markup language that can be readily used in web development.