A component based methodology for Web application development

Today's enterprises increasingly rely on the Web to support their operations, global business alliances, and integration of their business processes with those of their suppliers, partners, and customers. In order to stay competitive, businesses must also respond to changing business and competitive environments in near real-time. This requires that the architecture and design of business systems and applications should allow quick reconfiguration as well as collaboration among distributed software components. Existing software design methodologies often lack the Web focus and explicit support for componentization. This paper presents a methodology for requirements analysis and high-level design, specifically for component-based Web applications. Using the Web page as the fundamental building block of Web applications, the proposed methodology introduces page and component classifications, and a set of tags to implement link semantics. Based on these constructs, the methodology then specifies procedures for requirements analysis and design. A running business example is used to illustrate various stages of the analysis and design process.