Enterprise Frameworks for Data Intensive Web Applications: an End-User Development Model Based Approach

This paper investigates enterprise frameworks in the context of data intensive web applications, andproposes an approach that integrates the paradigms of End User Development and Model Baseddevelopment. An enterprise framework denotes a reusable, semi-complete application "skeleton" thatcan be easily adapted to produce custom software products in a specific business sector.Traditionally, it is conceived as a tool for expert software developers. In contrast, we propose toregard enterprise frameworks as tools that enable domain experts to develop for data intensive webapplications in a given field without the need of technological training or support by expertprogrammers. We propose the adoption of a model-driven process for framework-enableddevelopment, based on conceptual models that are appropriate for the framework domain and domainexperts can understand, adapt, and customize. We discuss requirements for and benefits of combiningthe two paradigms, and exemplify our approach presenting CHEF, an enterprise framework for dataintensivemultichannel web applications in the domain of cultural heritage and cultural tourism.CHEF has been developed in the context of a wide international initiative called MEDINA and hasbeen intensively evaluated in this and other projects.