Involving End-Users in Web-Based System Development with INTER-Mediator

Abstract

End-user participation helps development activity achieve good results. The web application framework INTER-Mediator can create a database-driven web page with declarative descriptions, enabling end-users to participate. In this paper, we show that a web system developed by using this framework can be maintained with modified declarative descriptions, although they are done with imperative descrip- tions in other common frameworks. End-users can learn the framework quickly enough, and the framework has fewer code metrics than others. These facts increase the benefit of end-user development, and we conclude that the framework can enable end-users without specialized programming skills to participate in the development process, especially maintenance. If non-programmers like end-users can participate in the system development, the total cost can be reduced, and small- and medium-sized organizations will have more opportunities to introduce web-based business systems.