StateWebCharts: A formal description technique dedicated to navigation modelling of web applications

Abstract

This paper presents StateWebCharts (SWC), a formal description technique based on statecharts for describing navigation on web applications. This notation extends the classical statecharts notation by adding more necessary concepts such as an appropriate semantics for states and transitions in a Web context, including notions like dialog initiative control and client and server activities. As well as statecharts do, this formal description technique features a graphical representation thus making it easier to use for web designers and formal enough to allow to rigorously reason about properties of navigation models. In order to show the applicability of the notation, we show, in the paper, its use on two real-size web applications. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.