Applying Formal Methods in Designing Web Application Model - Paper Example

Paper Type:  Dissertation introduction
Pages:  5
Wordcount:  1143 Words
Date:  2021-05-28

Models are a representation of a solid starting point for implementation of a Web application. They form a starting point when we take into account that static and dynamic aspects of the content, presentation, and hypertext that make up a Web application. The aim of the content model of a Web application is to capture the underlying information and logic of the application resembles that of a non-Web application, the interest in hypertext consideration is specific to Web applications. All kinds of navigation possibilities are represented by hypertext models on the basis of content. It is the role of the presentation model to map the hypertext structures to web pages and their link; in summary, provision of a graphical user interface. Recent modeling efforts are focused on inclusion of context information such as time, location or device used. The modeling efforts aim at using such information in the adaptation of Web applications (CHI & LEE, 2008). Despite the relentless efforts in generating models that can improve Web applications due to their increasing popularity, formal analysis and verification of Web application design have also been a key issue of concern. This issue form the focus of this research study

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Formal verification

A three-tier architecture is used to deploy most application software over computer clouds. This is so in cases where a backend database is used to store persistent application data which is later on accessed and modified by server-side code based on the user client-side user interactions. Data models of web application discussed earlier on the form the foundation of the three tiers. Through data models, the set objected stored by the application and the relationship between these objects can be identified. Various techniques can be used for data model specification verification and repair. Automated verification of data model is the first approach that has three main steps:

Extraction of the formal data model from an object-relational mapping.

Conversion of verification queries regarding data models into queries regarding the level of satisfaction of resulting formulas of logic

Checking satisfiability of resulting formulas using automated decision procedure (Nijjar, 2014).

Automated verification of data models is the best formal verification frameworks. To improve it ease-of-use, this research study proposes property templates for specifying the properties of data models which are automatically translated to logical formulas prior to verification. Specification and verification processes can be further automated through techniques intended for automated inference of properties regarding the data model by analysis of the relations among classes of objects, and pattern identification corresponding to a subset of the proposed property template. The inferred properties on the data model can then be checked using the automated verification techniques. In the case of failure in property inference, certain techniques can be used to generate fixes to the data models. These repair techniques enable inference of properties that failed (Nijjar, 2014).

The implementation of these techniques is done using a tool for Web application analysis that has been developed using the framework of Ruby on Rails. The techniques also need to be applied to open source application to confirm their viability. Experimental results can be used to demonstrate whether the approach is effective in automated identification and fixing of errors in data models of real-world web applications.Data model constructs can be formalized as relational constraints on a formal data models. Formal data models are a representation of the Web application objects and how they relate to one another. Formalization of data models in web applications can be expounded on using Active Records as an example. It is essential to note that the primary focus is analyzing a majorly static model. An operation that modifies objects and their relationships are no modeled except delete propagation that is declared in Active Record. Extraction of the set of constraints that must hold for any instance of the data model is made possible by focusing on static data model specified in the Active Record files (Nijjar, 2014).

A formal data model can be defined as tuple M= (S, C, D) where S represent the data model schema (data model sets and relations), C a set of relational constraints and D a set of dependency constraints. The names of the object classes, relations, domains, and relationship range are identified by the schema S of the data model. Relational constraints in C express all constraints on the relationship. For example, relationship related to cardinality (one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many), transitive related relations (: through option) and condition behavior related relationships (: conditions options), and polymorphically related behaviors (: polymorphic options) are all expressed through C constraints. In a situation where a certain relation r satisfies a given constraint, this is stated as r|=C (Offutt & Wu, 2009).

Dependency constraints in D are concerned with the means of instance changes within data model with respect to the deletion of an object. These constraints, therefore express conditions on two instances that are consecutive in a relation, for example when one object is deleted from the relationship this leads to other instance of object deletion with the same relationship. Determination of existence of dependency constraints requires two instances within the same relation; r and r. r denotes the instance before deletion while r the one after deletion. If the two instance satisfies the dependency constraint they can be stated as (r, r) |= D. This can be formalized on Rails construct using the: dependent option. The delete operation needs to be modeled when it comes to formal modeling of dependency constraints. For example, in a relationship between user objects and profile objects, when modeling the delete operations, the set of user and profile object and their relationships need to be specified prior and after deletion (Offutt & Wu, 2009).

Research Question

For this research, we have three main research question?

How the benefit of formal methods can be applying in analyzing web application?

How the application of formal methods can be done without applying the complexity of formal methods itself?

How can formal methods analyze the web application?

Research objectives

The objectives of the research include:

Find out how to apply formal methods in designing web application model.

Motivation

Enable formal methods to be used without the complexity of applying the formal language.

To ease and increase the novice user confidence to use formal method in verifying the software models

Research contribution

Expected Outcome: Catalog of formal template and the verification properties (pattern snapshot analysis/domain pattern)

Have a technique that has WebML, Alloy, Template catalog for formalizing Web Application.

References

CHI, Y. & LEE, H. (2008). A formal modeling platform for composing web services. Expert Systems With Applications, 34(2), 1500-1507. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2007.01.022

Nijjar, J. (2014). Analysis and Verication of Web Application Data Model (Ph.D.). UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara.

Offutt, J. & Wu, Y. (2009). Modeling presentation layers of web applications for testing. Software & Systems Modeling, 9(2), 257-280. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10270-009-0125-4

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Applying Formal Methods in Designing Web Application Model - Paper Example. (2021, May 28). Retrieved from https://midtermguru.com/essays/applying-formal-methods-in-designing-web-application-model-paper-example

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