Transforming Object-Oriented Model to a Web Interface Using XSLT

Abstract

Citizen science projects are based on gathering data from citizens. Citizen science projects start from understanding what type of data is needed and from whom. This can lead to creating a conceptual model for the project. Citizen science projects often use web interfaces and creating the interfaces require specific tools or programming knowledge. Having a method for creating the interface from a conceptual model would increase project development speed. This paper tackles the presented idea by using simple steps to create a web interface from an object-oriented conceptual model using XML transformation language XSLT. The model is transformed into a text-based representation using XSD that is then turned into an XML template. Finally, XSLT is used to generate a web interface by transforming the XML file. Results show that the process from object-oriented model to XML can be automated and the programming required for a working web interface is minimal but without other programming languages, the functionality is lacking. At the end of this article, some design suggestions are given to increase the functionalities while maintaining a low amount of programming.