Model for the definition of World Wide Web Sites and Methods for their Design and Evaluation

The present invention describes a model, named WebML (Web Modelling Language), and method for the specification, design, and verification of World Wide Web (Web) sites. WebML allows the designer to build an abstract specification of the Web site, which can be used to construct a concrete implementation of the specified Web site. The WebML model includes a structural sub-model, a composition sub-model and a navigation sub-model. The structural sub-model describes the schema of the content to be published in the Web site, using an Entity-Relationship model. The composition sub-model includes several types of logical pages, which specify alternative ways in which elements of the structural sub-model can be published in a Web page. The navigation sub-model describes how logical pages can be linked to enable a user to navigate from a logical page to another logical page; it also describes how logical pages are clustered in physical pages, and how physical pages are clustered into site views, which are views of the Web site suited to a given user group or access device.