WQA: an XSL Framework for Analyzing the Quality of Web Applications
Piero Fraternali, Maristella Matera, Andrea Maurino · 2002
Current Web applications are very complex and high sophisticated software products, whose quality, as perceived by users, can heavily determine their success or failure. Web design patterns have been so far proposed, as a way to support Web designers and developers with proven and successful solutions. The correct use of these methodological tools allows designers to improve the application quality. However, even when a gallery of Web design patterns is ready for use, the problem may arise of verifying if such patterns are applied consistently. This paper presents Web Quality Analyzer, an XSL-based framework, which is able to automatically analyze the XML specification of Web applications designed through WebML, with the aim of identifying the occurrence of some design patterns, and calculating metrics revealing if they are used consistently throughout the application. Metrics are defined by XSL files, which are applied over the XML specification of the application conceptual schema, so that to compute the metric. Concepts behind our approach will be exemplified by showing how the use of our software framework during the development of a real Web application designed with WebML has allowed designers to improve the application quality.