the webml innovation cycle
DESCRIPTION
10 years of WebRatio is a good occasion for thinking about the path that led from a university research project to a recognized modeling language (WebML) and a solid, industrialized version of a toolsuite (WebRatio).The main ingredient of our history are basically:- a substrate for cross-fertilization coming from European Research projects (W3I3, WebSI, Cooper, BPM4People, ...)- valuable inputs and requirements from customers (both final customers and software integrators)- a strong research team that continuously worked on innovating the approach- the teaching activities within the university- and the professional developers and analysts at Web Models that work hard for making a good product out of the rough ideas and experiments produced in the university.These ingredients allowed more than 10 years of evolution of the language and the tool. I tried to summarized this in the virtuous cycle of our experience.While research provides innovation to both teaching and industrialization, and finally produces the upto date version of the language and methodology.The tool vendor provides the tool itself and also requirements coming from real industrial customers. The tool is extremely useful for teaching and research purposes not only within our group, but throughout the world (thanks to an academic program that allows education institutions to get free licenses of the tool).The role of customer is crucial in this picture, because it's from their input (business, technical and UI requirements) that we extract the actual needs of the industry. The whole innovation cycle start there.Furthermore, customers provide feedback and feasibility/acceptability check upon our findings and solutions.This virtuous cycle has been able to carry the core idea of the WebML language through 10 years of history in the product (and 15 years of history of the language). The lesson learned is that, if you have a core concept which is flexible and innovable, a good strategy can lead to continuous evolution, improvement and expansion of the idea. In these years the language underwent a huge number of incremental additions: support of web services support of business processes support of semantic web features support of RIA - AJAX featuresIf you want to get a flavour of the experience, you may check out this paper, published in John Mylopoulos Festschrift by Springer:S. Ceri, M. Brambilla, P. Fraternali: “The History of WebML Lessons Learned from 10 Years of Model-Driven Development of Web Applications“. In book: Conceptual Modeling: Foundations and Applications, Essays in honor of John Mylopoulos, Springer LNCS, Festschrift series, vol. 5600, 2009, pp. 273-292TRANSCRIPT
WebML
WebML 10 (or 15?) years, without showing it
Marco BrambillaPolitecnico di Milano
WebML
WebML
Agenda
• The need• The strategy • The history
WebML
The need
Abstraction
WebMLThe need
• Conceptual modeling
• Abstraction from the technology.. But NOT • From the technological opportunities• From the requirements
• Innovation• Extensibility
WebML
The Strategy
Virtuous innovation cycle
WebMLThe Strategy
• Retrospective
• Virtuous Cycle– At two levels:
• Macro-innovations • Refinement of each innovation
• Repeatability of the experience.. Not granted!
WebML
Research (Politecnico)
WebMLDesign method, language, and
platform
Tool vendor (WebRatio)
Customers (requirement
providers)
Teaching (university courses)
Final customers
(EU) Research Project consortia
Software houses and integrators
innovation
innovation toolsuite
Toolsuite, industrial requirements
innovation
requirementsuse cases
WebML
The history
“Amarcord”?(F. Fellini, 1973)
WebML1. AutoWeb
• Once upon a time ...
1998
• W3I3 project
• The research starts
WebML2. WebML
• And then ...
1999
• Teaching and consolidation at Politecnico
WebML3. WebML in action
• And then ...
2000• The first “customer”
WebML3. WebML in action
• And then ...
2000• The first “customer”• No company or product yet• Features implemented at night in Italy upon
customers request in the US during the day
WebML4. Web Services
• And then ...2003
• SOA, Services, Mashups
• First research solution:
Travel Agencyhome page
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Room Search Page
Guest#Period
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WebML4. Web Services
• And then ...2005
• Refinement and implementation
WebML5. Business Processes
• And then ... 2004
• Business processes andorchestrations
• Research proposal:
Applicant SiteView
Request
Start
Request
End
Requests page Proposal Confirmation
Choice
Start
Choice
End
LoanProposal[Request_LoanProposal]
Proposals
Apply Now
Perform the Choice activity:
Confirm the selected loan proposal.
Modify the application data.
Perform the Request activity:
Fill in personal and loan data.Assign the new application to
the next activity.
Home page Request Details page
Request
LoanRequest
Data Entry Modify
User
Profile
User
Modify Profile pageModify Profile
Proposal
LoanProposal
LoanRequest[Approved=True][User_Request]
RequestsUser
User
Loan Accepted page
Request
LoanRequest
Your Requests
WebML5. Business Processes
• And then ... 2010
• Industrial implementation and refinement– Directly in the WebRatio tool– After a few years (based on customers need)
WebML6. Semantic Web
• And then ... 2005
WebML6. Semantic Web
• Still a research project only
• But.. What about the future? – Linked data, ...
WebML7. RIA - AJAX
• And then ... 2005
• Rich Web interfaces
• Theoretical model in the research group• And simplified model implemented in the tool
immediately available• Future: a new, comprehensive model coming up
WebML8. Social Web / BPM
• Today
WebML8. Social Web / BPM
• Oggi
WebML9. Standardization
• Today• Strategic effort within OMG (Object
Management Group)
WebML9. ...
• What about the future?
• Search, Interfaces, Modernization
And...?
WebML
Conclusion
Virtuous cycle