A semantics-based aspect-oriented approach to adaptation in web engineering

Abstract

In the modern Web, users are accessing their favourite Web applications from any place, at any time and with any device. In this setting, they expect the application to user-tailor and personalize content access upon their particular needs. Exhibiting some kind of user- and context-dependency is thus crucial in Web Engineering. In this research, we focus on separating the adaptation engineering process from regular Web engineering by applying aspect-oriented techniques. We show how semantic information and metadata associated with the content can be exploited in our aspect-oriented approach. Furthermore, the approach allows the use of global (structural) properties of the Web application in adaptation specification. We thus obtain several advantages, which are demonstrated in this paper: to control adaptation specification) separate from (regular) Web Engineering oncerns in a richer, more consistent, robust and flexible way.