2009 WiEE International Advance Conputing Conference (IACC 2009)Patialae, India, 6-7 March 2009

High Quality Web-Application Development on JavaBE Platforn

Harshad B. Praj'apati Vipul K. DabhiInformation Technology Department Information Technology Department

Dharmsinh Desai University Dharmsinh Desai UniversityNadiad, India Nadiad, India

harshad.b.prajapatiggmail.com vipul.k.dabhiggmail.com

Abstract-Quality of web-applications plays major role in its organization does not face the problem of vendor lock-in. Thesuccess. And the high quality web-application is really possible Java EE platform based web-applications useby following high quality web engineering process. The use of ModeVView/Controller (MNVC) [2] design pattern [3] for threestrong web-application architecture with strong development architectural components: presentation logic, controller logic,platform not only make web-applications robust and of high and entity/business logic. We discuss MNVC design patternquality but also give web-application an ability to meet changing used in traditional GUI based applications and also discussand demanding customer requirements in efficient manner. A how it is adapted in the architecture of Java EE platform basedModel View Controller MVC) design pattern has remainedfundamentalaiewCotrctetura design patternevhafrgrematd web-applications. We analyze the Java EE platform as per (i)fundamental architectural design pattern even after great quality attributes requirements ni of web-applications (ii)evolution in architectures of user interactive applications. In this related support in development process (iii) related support topaper, we discuss the support for achieving quality attributes for involved people during development, and present our results inthe web-application, the support for web-application digeople formg resultsindpresentw esultindevelopment process and the support for meeting demanding quick digestible form. Ourresults indicate that web-applicationfeatures of web application on Java EE platform. This development on Java EL platform has a great value incontribution will help a lot for small scale as well as large scale providing high quality to web-application, satisfying changingweb-application development and for moulding web-application customer requirements and satisfying changing businessinto a future's high quality finished product from inception phase requirements.itself. The presented work, in this paper, concentrates on

Keywords-MVC; Web Application; Java EE; Quality Attributes; achieving high quality for web-application developed on JavaHigh Quality Web Development. EE platform from different perspective of overall development

process. The related work in the category is as follows. TheWeb-application development using the \iVC design pattern

I. INTRODUCTION can be found in [4]. The MNVC design pattern in ASP.NET andAlong with the great demand of web-applications in the era JSP frameworks can be found in [5]. The quality characteristics

of pervasive and ubiquitous computing, a number of issues and attributes for web sites can be found in [I].related to quality of web-applications [1] have also gained agreat attention in web-application development process. Great The Section II dlscusses the MVC design pattern incompetitions in the web-application business compel web- ao GUI alication architecture and its adapr tation inapplication developers more quality conscious. It will be of web-applcation archltecture. The Section III presents web-an lication develonment nrocess and available su 1ort for it ongreat value if a web-application could survive against pp p p ppsdemandingvaluedifchaniweb-app requirements, and changing Java EE platform. The Section IV presents available valuabledemanding and changing customer features for web-application on Java EE platform. Section Vbusiness requirements. presents the result of Java EE platform analysis for achieving

Building high quality web-application is really a difficult high quality of web-application and its components. Andand challenging task. But the support for right development finally the Section VI presents the conclusions and direction forprocess, methods, tools, and people really make possible to future research work.achieve high quality of web-application. As the developmentplatform influences associated development process, methods, II. THE WEB-APPLICATION ARCHITECTURE ON JAVA EEtools, and people, it really plays a major role for making PLATFORM USINGMVC DESIGN PATTERNdevelopment process simple, efficient, and robust and forachieving high quality of web-application. An MVC [2] design pattern [3] has remained fundamental

architectural design pattern even after great evolution in theJava EL platform [7] is open, standard based n[8] hardware architectures of user interactive applications. So, we would like

and OS independent platform on which distributed enterprise to provide short introduction on it to the readers before weapplications can be developed and run. As the applications discuss its usage in web-application architecture on Java ELtargeted on Java EL platform are vendor neutral, the platform n7].

978-1E424-LA1 8886/08/82L5te()0© 2008 11T 1E]Ji664

A. The M7C Design Pattern in distributed environment unlike JavaBean. The JSPThe MVC design pattern is widely used by programmer, Itech is used for creai view; and te JP e is

sof e designer, and GI component developer to architect considered as a view template. The execution of this JSP pagethe widget they are developing. The MVC design pattern, as generaes the view - HTML [13] contet.shown in Figure 1, consists of three kinds of objects: Model,View, and Controller, which handle tlhree basic responsibilities Databaseof any widget: entit (data), bounday (presentation), andcontrol (behavior) respectively. The model encapsulates Java EE Container apply servicesapplication data and business logic; the view handles rendenrng -of application data and visual interface to user; and the JavaBean/EJBcontroller handles user's interaction with the application. Createlupdate contentnm

model (m)

serviet (View Template)(Controller) _

1 t :no~~~~~~~htiFy stelectview;rr(mIread view apply services generate HTML

forwardA forward

|ntroSllOr view Web Server

update view ~~~~~~GETIPOST HTMVILrequest Viewreceive userWeBrwrinterface events - t- display outpLIt

W Browser

Userreceive userinterface events4- Jser 4- display output

Figure 1. MC Design Pattern

The MVC design pattern separates views and models by Figture 2. Use of the MVC Design Patter in the Java EE Platform basedestablishing subscribe/notify protocol between them. A view web-application architecteobject must ensure that its appearance reflects the state of the The Java EE platform provides many system services tomodel. The model object is independent of both view and web-applicion components. a BE platfrm providescontroller objects, so it is possible to have miultiple views support for security, authentication, authonrzation transaction.(presentations) of same model (data). All associated views can T database connection manaement is handled by the Jasubscribe with model and model notifies them about its state EE platform and it is confiurable extemally in deploymentchange. descriptor, so the model component does not need to worry

When user interacts with the MVC design paern based about those details. Thus, the responsibility of modelGUI form or page, all fired events are captured by controller component is just to hadle only business data ad businessobject. The controller then decides whether the fired event is logic. The authentication and authorization service is alsorelated to change in state of model or change in state of view. provided by the Java EE platform to servlet and this service isAs an example, when the user fires event related to changing also configurable externally in deployment descriptor. Thevalue in text field, the controller calls the method of tmlodel to container mediates between the servlet components and webchange its content. But if the user performs horizontal or browser for each HTTP [14] requests and applies the servicesvertical scroll-up or scroll-down, the model content does not as conf ed in the deplo ent descrptor.change and only the view should be notified to reflect thechanges in its appearance. III. WEB-APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT PROCESS ON

JAA EE PLATFORMB. Web-Application Architecture in Java EEplatform In this section, we discuss about web-application

In a stand-alone application, generally the model, view, and development process in Java BE platform [7] and the supportcontroller live on the same machine. But in a distributed web- available for web-application development from the Java BEapplication, the application architectute is different; however, platform.the MVC design pattern is so general that it can still be appliedto its architecture. The Java EE platform based web- A. Web-Applicatiot Development Proeessapplications utilize MVC based architecture as shown in Figue A typical development process on Java BE platform

involves following taskss: designing, coding, creatingIn Java EE platform based web-application architectures, deploymtient descnrptor, packaging, assemubling, and

the servlet [10] component is used as a controller; the JavaBean deployment. These tasks are also applicable to web-applicationcomponent is used ast a model; and te Java Server Pages [11] development also. The Java BE platfr specification [8L](JSP) pag:e iXs used as a view template. The Ente;rprise Jaa specifiesc the roles an:d their responsibilities in Java enterpriseB3ean (EJB) [12]l can be used as a. model, wic can be located application developmen. We present here these roles and thieirA

2009IEEItertnatiolAd a ice Con'ipi C. ou/crce (:IACC 2009,) 16&5

responsibilities in various phases of web-application responsibilities and their involvement in specific developmentdevelopment process. The Table I shows the major roles played phases.by involved people during development, their role based

TABLE I. ROLE BASED DEVELOPMENT ON JAVA EE PLATFORM: ROLE, RESPONSIBILITIES, AND INVOLVEMENT OF PEOPLE IN DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

Role Responsibilities Involvement in Development PhasesApplication component Creating EJB components, web components DevelopmentproviderApplication assembler Assemble different components into a deployable application. Development, Integration

Configuring deployment descriptorDeployer Deployment of the assembled application in a specific operational Deployment

environment.System administrator Maintenance and monitoring of application. Decisions on Load Maintenance

balancing, redundancy, Fail over, etc.

lock-in. The Java EE platform specifies vendor neutralB. SupportinDeelopmentProcessconfiguration in standard deployment descriptor and vendorThe development becomes efficient if tools/technology configuration in vend deployment descriptor

support is available during coding, testing, integration, files. The vendor specific configuration includes abstractdeployment and maintenance phases. Here, we discuss howJava EE platform provides support during all these phases to security roles mapping with target security system, data sourcemake development process efficient. references, and other resource configuration.

4) Support in Maintenance: The Java EE platform1) Support in] Codingg: The development environment specification clearly specifies the roles and responsibilities of

should provide facilities of avoiding typos, require minimal different involved people. As discussed above. All these roleseffort for adding new functionalities, and provide support for apply to web as well as enterprise module/applicationstandards based technology and tools. Very sophisticated development. Three main roles: developer, assembler, anddevelopment tools are available for software development on deployer simplify the whole development task. All three basicJava EE platform. The Netbeans IDE [15] and Eclipse IDE components: servlet, JSP and JavaBean/EJB components can[16] are among them. These IDEs are equipped with be implemented and maintained independently by servletsophisticated editors. Few of such features are auto code developer, JSP developer, and Java/EJB developer,completion, re-factoring, code insertion, syntax highlighting to respectively.avoid typo errors, fixing package imports, getter/setterhandling, and code insertion for calling of EJBs. These features IV. VALUABLE FEATURES FOR WEB-APPLICATION ON JAVAhelp a lot while developing servlet, JSP, JavaBean and EJB EE PLATFORMcomponents. As Java technology [9] is object oriented and platform

2) Support in Testing: Good debugging and unit testing independent, many features such as scalability, portability,support are basic requirement in testing process. The Java reusability, security, high performance, flexibility are inherentplatform [9] comes with debugger jdb and the IDEs such as in Java classes or components. Both Servlet [rI] and JavaBeanNetbeans and Eclipse provide good debugging support. The components are java classes, so above stated features areJTJnit [17] provides regression testing framework for unit inherent in them. This also applies to EJB [12] component also,

It can accelerate programming and increase the quality which is collection of java classes and deployment descriptor.testing. It provides API for easily creatingJavatestcases, JSP [11] scripting language is used to create JSP page.Of code. It provides API for easilly creatng Java test cases, Although a JSP page looks like an HTML [13] kind of page, atcomprehensive assertion facilities, test runners for running execution time it is a translated java class which gets executed.tests, aggregation facility and reporting. All these features help In short, all three components: servlet, JavaBean/EJB, and JSPthe developers from embedding several println( calls in actual that are used in implementing MVC [2] design pattern [3] oncode and manually preparing test results in structured fashion. Java EE platform [7] are scalable, portable, reusable, secure,Adding and then removing individual println( for testing high performance, flexible. The following available features onpurpose is very frustrating task; and it can not be replicated into the Java EE platform add value to web-application. And insimilar classes easily. certain business/customer requirements, they are indispensable.

3) Support in Integration and Deployment: The integration A S

and deployment of web-application should be as easy as ecuritypossible to minimize deployment time and downtime. And the The communication security (confidentiality and integrity)deployment process should be independent of different hosting is provided through SSL [18] support. For SSL support, theapplication server providers. Since Java technology [9] is SSL connector should be configured on the Java EE container

1~ ~i wil run and the server certificate signed by Certifying Authority (CA)standrd bsed,hewb-appicaton deelopdusig1r] should be installed on the Java EE container. A Java EEon any Java EE compliance [8] application server without any baewb-plcto isongudfrcnietaiyad

modification in code. The web-application Is free firom vendor integrity declaratively. The Figure 3 shows three configurations

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related to security aspect of web-application. The part shown roll back the transaction. The support for only either a singleunder <! SECURE COMMUNICATION --> is related to transaction or no transaction at all is available from containerconfidentiality and integrity of data that gets transmitted managed transaction. For fine-grained control over transaction,between Java EE container and web-browser. the bean-managed transaction can be used. Here the code in the

session or message driven bean explicitly marks the boundaries<- SECURITY ROLE > of the transaction using Java Transaction API (JTA).<security-role>

<role-namne>mnanager</role-namne> C. Supportfor session managemen</security-role>

Most of the web-applications on the Internet handle the<c-- SECURITY CONSTRAINT --> session using cookie mechanism. So, the users, who are<security-constraint> accessing such web-applications from browsers that do not<c--ACCESS CONTROLLED RESOURCE AND OPERATION - support cookie mechanism, cannot participate in session and-> will not be able to access any personal resource. The encode<web-resource-collection>

<web-resource-name>lnbox</web-resource-name> URE mechanism on Java EE platform automatically<url-pattern>/user/inbox/*</url-pattern> determines whether the client's browser supports the cookie or<http-method>GET</http-rnethod> not, and then decides how the information about session<http-rmethod>POST</http-method> identification should be stored on client machine. If the client's

</web-resource-collection> browser does not support the cookie or the cookie feature has<!-AUTHORIZED USER-->

<auth-constraint> been disabled by the user, the session id value is encoded in<role-namne>user/role-name> URL part of each hyper-link on the page that client is going to</auth-constraint> use.

<!-SECURE COMMUNICATION --><user-data-constraint>

<transport-guarantee> DdCONFIDENTIAL If a user is trying to access a resource, which is not

</transport-guarantee> available, the server shows the error message 404</user-data-constraint> (SC NOT FOUND) resource not found exception. Instead, the

</secu rity-co nstraint>_ - ..error page containing beautiful description in non-technical<c-- LOGIN CONFIGURATION--> English language is shown, the user will really understand the

<login-config> cause of problem and sometimes feels that you care for the<auth-rnethod>FORM</auth-rnethod> users. A good web-application should not show the error

</Iogin-config> messages generated by application server or web-serverdirectly to users. As an example, a web-application can be

Figure 3. Declarative Security Configurations for the Java EE platform configured for 404 resource not found exception as shown inbased web-applications Figure 4. Using this configuration, the error pages for user-

T tTin defined error messages can also be specified. Instead of error-The part under <!-- LOGiN CONFIGURATION--> in code, the exception-type can also be specified. The

Figure 3 declares that user authentication must be performed resourceNotFound.html file would contain error message in abefore granting access to resources. And it declares that languageunderstandabletouuser.authentication method is oftype FORM.

The authorization part includes which operations on which <error-page>resources are allowed by which users. The part inside <web- <error-code>404</error-code>resource-collection> indicates which resource is access <location>/resourceNotFound.html</Iocation>controlled indicated by <url-pattern> and which operations are </error-page>allowed indicated by <http-method>. And which users areallowed to perform selected operations on selected resources is Figure 4. Declarative Error-page Configuration using error-code andconfigured under <! AUTHORIZED USER --> part. location

B. Transaction Processing E. Internationalization/Multi-language SupportJava EE platform supports container-managed transaction If information is provided to users in a language that they

and bean managed transaction for session bean and message understand and use, it would be easier for users to understanddriven bean (MDB) [12]. In Container-managed transaction, and use the application. The Unicode support for strings isthe enterprise bean code does not explicitly mark the inherent in the Java language [9]. The language also supportstransaction's boundaries using begin transaction and commit locale specific formatting of number, currency, date, time, etc.transaction. Instead, the transaction is configured in All such supports help a lot in making the Java EE platform [7]deployment descriptor. The container begins a transaction based web-application an intemnationalized one and they alsoimmediately before a business method in enterprise starts. It increase the usability of web-application across the world.commits the transaction just before the business method inenterprise bean exits. If an exception gets generated duringbusiness method execution, the container will automatically

2009IEEEInternationalAdvane ComputingConference(IACC2009) 1667

V. ACHIEVING QUALITY FOR THE WEB-APPLICATION AND web-application includes various design tasks [6]. These designITS COMPONENTS ON JAVA EE PLATFORM tasks and available support for them on Java EE platform [7]

The quality of individual components also affect in are presented in Table III. Third, the overall support for quality.. . . . . ~~~~~~~~~attributes [ni to web-application as a whole determines theachieving overall quality of whole application. We, first, ov erall q tyual

present here important quality attributes of components and These quality attributes, criteria involved inhow these quality attributes are satisfied for all three achieving these quality attributes and available support forcomponents: Model, View, and Controller. The related analysis them on Java EE platform are presented in Table IV.

and results are presented in Table II. Second, the design of any

TABLE II. QUALITY ATTRIBUTES OF COMPONENTS AND SUPPORT FOR THEM ON JAVA EE PLATFORM

Attributes Support for quality attributes to MVC componentsModel View Controller

High Performance JIT compiler for fast compilation of byte code, Separate thread per user request, Local EJB components to improveperformance.

Extensibility All components are Object Oriented.Scalability Java EE platform is providing distributed load balancing mechanism. It is a vendor specific feature mentioned in

specification.Security Declarative and Programmatic Using URL masking. Declarative and Programmatic security for Servlet

security for EJB component. Java component.Bean components are accessiblethrough view/controller.

Robustness Components run under control ofNVM, dynamic class loader and byte code verifier.Flexibility Using JNDI based declarative Using master page, Using request-dispatching and forward methods,

database access configuration. file/page inclusion, filter chain.Change in model object using request dispatching,scoped attributes is easily possible. request forwarding

Modularity EJB jar modules Tag library, war war modules, filtersmodules

Reusability Remote EJB object support Custom tag library, Using request dispatching and forward methods.page/file inclusion, Filter chain.

__________________________ ~~~~~links

TABLE III. WEB-APPLICATION DESIGN TASKS AND SUPPORT FOR THEM ON JAVA EE PLATFORM

Attributes [6] Java EE Platform support for design taskInterface Design HTML controls, Java Server Faces (JSF) framework controls.Aesthetic Design Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) support.Content Design Container managed relations for entities and entity beans and provides EJB-QL.Navigation Design In JSF framework, we can configure navigation graphically as well as manually in faces-config.xml.Architecture Design MVC design pattern.Component Design Life cycle of all components is handled by Java EE container and provides basic skeleton for all components.

TABLE IV. WEB-APPLICATION QUALITY ATTRIBUTES AND SUPPORT FOR THEM ON JAVA EE PLATFORM

Attributes [1] Criteria Support on Java EE platformUsability - Global site understandability - Internationalization support, locale specific resource bundles

- On-line feedback and help features - Custom error pages- Interface and aesthetic features - Components: inbuilt as well as Custom user interface component development in

JSF. CSS support- Special features - Transaction processing, security

Functionality - Searching and retrieving capability - create, read, update, delete, find, business functions support on EJB entity beansand persistence entities

- Navigation and browsing features - View: declarative navigation in JSF frameworkModel: Container Managed Persistence relations in EJB entity beans and

persistence entities.- Application domain-related features - EJB session bean: business logic, business rules.

EJB entity beans and persistent entities: business dataEJB Message Driven Bean: Asynchronous business event handling.

Reliability - Correct link processing - Declarative navigation is accurate.- Error recovery - Exception handling support.- User input validation and recovery - JSF framework supports data conversion and validation.

Efficiency - Response time performance - Separate thread per user request.- Page generation speed - JSP is complied once. It is fast.- Graphics generation speed - No explicit support is available.

Maintainability - Ease of correction - Role based and concurrent maintenance task.- Adaptability - Java EE is standard based, no vender lock-in.- Extensibility - Components are object oriented

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[3] E. Gamma, Design Pattems: Elements of Reusable Object-OrientedVI. CONCLUSION Software, Addison-Wesley, 1994.

Wc analyzed thc Java BE platform as pcr quality attributes [4] A. Leff and J. T. Rayfield "Web-application development using therequirement .web-applications and foundthatqualitymodel/view/controller design pattem," in Proceedings of the 5th IEEE

rcquircmcnts of webr-applications and found that quality International Conference on Enterprise Distributed Object Computing,attributes: usability, functionality, reliability, efficiency and 2001, pp. 118-127.maintainability can all be satisfied with it. From the discussion [5] F. A. Masoud, Dana. H. Halabi and Deema. H. Halabi, "ASP.NET andit is evident that Java EE platform simplifies the designing, JSP frameworks in model view controller implementation," indevelopment, deployment, integration and testing process of Proceedings of Information and Communication Technologies, 2006.web-application without compromising high quality. It also ICTTA'06, pp. 3593-3598.empowers the development of web-application with scalability, [6] R. S. Pressman, Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach 6e,portability, interoperability, reusability, flexibility and security. McGraw Hill, 2005.

[7] Sun MicroSystem. Java Enterprise Edition. http:// java.sun.com/javaee/Many frameworks for web-application development are [8] Java Community Process. http://jcp.org/

available on Java EE platformn, but no one is found providing [9] Sun MicroSystem. Java Technology. http://java.sun.com.support for high quality distributed web-application. In future, [10] Sun MicroSystem. Java Servlet Technology Implementation andwe intend to work on developing distributed high quality web- Specification. http://java.sun.com/products/servlet/down-application framework on Java EE platform. load.html#specs

[11] Sun MicroSystem. Java Server Pages. https://java.sun.com/products/jsp/REFERENCES [12] Sun MicroSystem. Enterprise JavaBeans Specifications.

http://java.sun.com/lproducts/ej bs/docs.html.[1] Olsina, L. et al., "Specifying quality characteristics and attributes for [13] W3C Specifications. http://www.w3.org

web sites," in Proc. 1 st ICSE Workshop on Web Engineering, ACM, Los [14] RFC: http protocol, http://www.w3.org/Protocols/ifc2616/rfc2616.htmlAngeles, May 1999. [14] Net:eans IDE, http://www.n s.orgc

[2] G. E. Krasner and S. T. Pope, "A Cookbook for Using the Model-View- [15] Netbeans IDE, http://www.netbeans.org.Controller User-Interface Paradigm in Smalltalk-80," Journal of Object- [16] Eclipse IDE http://www.eclipse.org.Oriented Programming, August/September 1988. [17] JUnit Framework, http://www.junit.org.

[18] RFC : SSL, www.ietforg/rfc/rfc2246.txt

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