Web Information Systems

To improve the reliability and efficiency of Web Software, the Testing Team should be creative and innovative, the experience and intuition of Tester also matters a lot. And most often the destructive nature of Tester brings reliable software to the user. Actually, Testing is the responsibility of everybody who is involved in the Project. But, one’s personal curiosity and attention is more important than the various techniques and tools available in the market for Web Testing due to the phenomena that Software Testing is an art. In this study, we are actually discussing certain techniques and tools which can be helpful to minimize bugs in Web Application and achieve reliability and efficiency to a certain level. Indeed, for bettering the quality of Web Application, Testing may not be considered as the only effective method because no one can certify that a system is bug-free. This paper presents some essential web testing techniques, strategies, methods and tools which need to be focused on when performing Web Testing for several web applications in order to achieve better results.

Existing presentation tools and document formats show a number of shortcomings in terms of the management, visualisation and navigation of rich cross-media content. While slideware was originally designed for the production of physical transparencies, there is an increasing need for richer and more interactive media types. We investigate innovative forms of organising, visualising and navigating presentations. This includes the introduction of a new document format supporting the integration or transclusion of content from different presentations and cross-media sources as well as the non-linear navigation of presentations. We present MindXpres, a web technology-based extensible platform for content-driven cross-media presentations. The modular architecture and plug-in mechanism of MindXpres enable the reuse or integration of new visualisation and interaction components. Our MindXpres prototype forms a platform for the exploration and rapid prototyping of innovative concepts for presentation tools. Its support for multi-device user interfaces further enables an active participation of the audience which should ultimately result in more dynamic, engaging presentations and improved knowledge transfer.

The teaching of programming concepts and algorithms very much depends on the mental models developed by scholars when learning how to program. There is a rich body of research on how to best teach programming. Nevertheless, many instructors follow a presentation-based approach where existing slideware such as PowerPoint or Keynote is used to show a sequential series of slides with static pieces of source code. Such a presentation-based approach based on existing slideware tools might not be optimal for the authoring as well as the delivery of programming courses. We outline how presentation-based eduction in programming can be improved by paying attention to existing research on how to best teach programming. We derive a number of requirements for more efficient source code visualisation in presentation tools and present an architecture as well as an extensible prototype for enhanced presentation-based teaching of programming. The presented interactive source code visualisation plug-in for the MindXpres presentation tool can be seen as a step towards enhancing existing slideware in order to achieve a more efficient and interactive teaching of programming concepts and algorithms. The ultimate goal of the presented approach is to present source code in a way that reinforces a user's mental model and thereby increases the knowledge transfer of presentations delivered in programming courses.

The development of document handling by organizations at the level of business processes and business information systems leads to the phenomenon that the majority of documents and their contents remain in semi-structured format and a definite minority of documents are directly mapped onto structured databases. The rapidly evolving technology on the database field provides the opportunity to manage directly the semi-structured documents in line with the requirements of business processes. A continuum of possible document formats may exist in business environments. The documents can be categorized by the organization of the underlying data collections and according to the necessity and capability of data included in documents as whether wholly or partially is to be structured. The most modern database technology yields tools for handling and retrieving data making use of semi-structured and unstructured data. Our proposed approach (1) on one hand provides a theoretical framework for modeling WIS to shape into some structure; (2) on the other hand yields guidance for design method to employ it for practical application with the extension of specific elementary models. The proposed modeling method that places the emphasis onto the documents and their symbiotic life with processes help in understanding the behavior of most modern information systems. Thereby, the combination of document centric-modeling and the Enterprise Architecture approach gives an opportunity for a unified modeling approach that keeps an eye on Conway's thesis that states that software architecture congruent with the structure of development team, and this statement may be paraphrased that the overall document structure may reflects the structure of the specific organization.

Web services refer to a specific set of technologies used to implement a Service Oriented Architecture. Thanks to maturing Web-services standards, and to new mobile devices and application solutions, progress is being made in presenting similar Web-services offerings in both mobile and fixed networks. To bring that architecture and the solutions it will support to the world of mobility is indeed a significant issue in m-business applications, because mobile Web services present various advantages: Reduction of the overall cost of development (by reusing existing system components), faster time to market introduction of products (provided by applications' rapid development and deployment) and remarkable possibilities to emerge new applications with increased functionalities. In addition, the new and forthcoming mobile networks, with native IP connection and high speed transmission capability, allow the development of a variety of modern multimedia services. Multimedia Messaging Services (capable to mix the media types in order to enable more intuitive messaging operation), and Instant Messaging and Presence Services (dedicated for presence, instant messaging, and distribution and sharing of multimedia content in groups of users), provide suitable underlying capabilities to support location-based and context-sensitive multimedia services. In this paper we will present the current approaches regarding architectural, functional and security features that allow enterprises to enjoy the benefits of traditional Web services in the mobile multimedia domain.

Purpose -Ubiquitous web applications (UWA) are a new type of web applications which are accessed in various contexts, i.e. through different devices, by users with various interests, at anytime from anyplace around the globe. For such full-fledged, complex software systems, a methodologically sound engineering approach in terms of model-driven engineering (MDE) is crucial. Several modeling approaches have already been proposed that capture the ubiquitous nature of web applications, each of them having different origins, pursuing different goals and providing a pantheon of concepts. This paper aims to give an in-depth comparison of seven modeling approaches supporting the development of UWAs. Design/methodology/approach -This methodology is conducted by applying a detailed set of evaluation criteria and by demonstrating its applicability on basis of an exemplary tourism web application. In particular, five commonly found ubiquitous scenarios are investigated, thus providing initial insight into the modeling concepts of each approach as well as to facilitate their comparability. Findings -The results gained indicate that many modeling approaches lack a proper MDE foundation in terms of meta-models and tool support. The proposed modeling mechanisms for ubiquity are often limited, since they neither cover all relevant context factors in an explicit, self-contained, and extensible way, nor allow for a wide spectrum of extensible adaptation operations. The provided modeling concepts frequently do not allow dealing with all different parts of a web application in terms of its content, hypertext, and presentation levels as well as their structural and behavioral features. Finally, current modeling approaches do not reflect the crosscutting nature of ubiquity but rather intermingle context and adaptation issues with the core parts of a web application, thus hampering maintainability and extensibility. Originality/value -Different from other surveys in the area of modeling web applications, this paper specifically considers modeling concepts for their ubiquitous nature, together with an investigation of available support for MDD in a comprehensive way, using a well-defined as well as fine-grained catalogue of more than 30 evaluation criteria.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to describe the required functionalities on providing Internet connectivity and mobility management for mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs), present discovered problems such as inconsistent contexts, and provide the corresponding solutions. It also provides a hybrid metric for the load-balance of intra/inter-MANET traffic over multiple Internet gateways.