Selecweb: A software tool for automatic selection of web frameworks

Abstract

Web applications and services are fundamental to designing smart infrastructure and cities. Developers often use various development technologies when developing web or cloud applications. One of such major technologies is web frameworks (e.g., Rails, Spring, Django, and CodeIgniter), which permit developers to develop without worrying about the low-level details. Programmers may choose from a variety of web frameworks, and different languages that support them, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Organizations work in different application domains and have diverse priorities and constraints with regard to the development of applications and services. In this paper, we propose an automatic tool, SelecWeb, for selecting a web framework based on a set of criteria and developer preferences. The set of selection criteria is developed by us and is a contribution of this paper. The tool currently uses analytic hierarchy process (AHP) for comparison, analysis, and decision-making. We provide a detailed description and analysis of the tool including a case study for web framework selection. Conclusions are drawn with design ideas on future extension of the tool using machine learning.