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, and proposes an approach that integrates the paradigms of End User Development and Model Based development. An enterprise framework denotes a reusable, semi-complete application ''skeleton'' that can 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 to regard enterprise frameworks as tools that enable domain experts to develop for data intensive web applications in a given field without the need of technological training or support by expert programmers. We propose the adoption of a model-driven process for framework-enabled development, based on conceptual models that are appropriate for the framework domain and domain experts can understand, adapt, and customize. We discuss requirements for and benefits of combining the two paradigms, and exemplify our approach presenting CHEF, an enterprise framework for dataintensive multichannel 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 has been intensively evaluated in this and other projects.