Aspect-oriented modeling of ubiquitous web applications: The aspectWebML approach

Ubiquitous web applications (UWA) are required to be customizable, meaning their services need to be adaptable towards the context of use, e.g., user, location, time, and device. Considering UWA's from a software engineering point of view, a systematic development on basis of models is crucial. Current web modeling languages, however, often disregard the crosscutting nature of customization potentially affecting all parts of a web application, and often mingle core and customization functionality. This leads to inefficient development processes, high maintenance overheads, and a low potential for reuse. We regard customization as a crosscutting concern in the sense of the aspect-oriented paradigm. As a proof of concept, we extend the prominent web modeling language WebML on basis of our reference architecture for aspect-oriented modeling. This allows for a clear separation between the core and customization functionality, and - as a spin-off demonstrates how to bridge existing (domain-specific) modeling languages with aspect-oriented concepts.