Uml - Based Web Engineering

A new kind of web applications came up to overcome the limitations of traditional web applications regarding the usability and interactivity of their user interfaces: the so-called Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). New languages and frameworks mainly drive the development of RIAs, but engineering of RIAs is a very new field in the area of software engineering in which a precise definition of RIAs and specification of their characteristics is still missing. This report presents a discussion on RIAs definitions, characteristics and the state-of-the-art regarding engineering approaches for RIAs and technologies used in their implementation. Based on existing definitions of RIAs this report came up with a new definition that addresses both, the technical characteristics of RIAs, and the user experience. Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) are web applications, which use data that can be processed both by the server and the client. Furthermore, the data exchange takes place in an asynchronous way so that the client stays responsive while continuously recalculating or updating parts of the user interface. On the client, RIAs provide a similar look-and-feel as desktop applications and the word "rich" means particularly the difference to the earlier generation of web applications. RIAs are basically characterized by a variety of interactive operating controls, the possibility of on-/offline use of the application, and the transparent usage of the client and server computing power and of the network connection.