Modern Web sites provide applications that are increasingly built to support the execution of business processes. In such a transaction-oriented Web site, the user executes a series of activities in order to carry out a specific task (e.g., purchase an airplane ticket). The manner in which the activities can be executed is a consequence of the transaction design. Unfortunately, many Web sites are constructed without proper attention to transaction design. The result is a system with unpredictable workflow and a lower quality user experience. This chapter presents an example of the recovery of the “as-is” design model of a Web application transaction. The recovery procedure is prescriptive, suitable for implementation by a human subject-matter expert, possibly aided by reverse engineering technology. The recovered design is modeled using extensions to the transaction design portion of the UML-based Ubiquitous Web Applications (UWA) framework. Recovery facilitates future evolution of the Web site by making the transaction design explicit, which in turn enables engineers to make informed decisions about possible changes to the application. Design recovery of a commercial airline’s Web site is used to illustrate the process.
Customisation for ubiquitous web applications: a comparison of approaches