28.06.2013 Views

Papers in PDF format

Papers in PDF format

Papers in PDF format

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

L<strong>in</strong>ks refer to Templates. From the user's po<strong>in</strong>t of view, there is no difference between a Dynamic L<strong>in</strong>k and a<br />

conventional L<strong>in</strong>k; a Web-Page generated on the fly looks exactly like a hardcoded page. For the analyst, the<br />

difference is real - a Dynamic L<strong>in</strong>k has additional attributes (the path and implementation language of the<br />

gateway-script, it's command-l<strong>in</strong>e-arguments etc.) which she has to take care of.<br />

The last element shown <strong>in</strong> Figure 1, the Diagram, is used to denote a hierarchical ref<strong>in</strong>ement. The only purpose<br />

of this construct is to reduce the number of elements <strong>in</strong> a diagram and make it more comprehensible.<br />

S<strong>in</strong>ce the W3DT method was developed for the task of design<strong>in</strong>g a WWW-site, it is best illustrated by regard<strong>in</strong>g<br />

the construction of a small WWW-based <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion-system.<br />

Example: The Cybersound Web-Site<br />

Cybersound is a record shop which <strong>in</strong>tends to create a WWW-site. The exist<strong>in</strong>g RDBMS shall be used to provide<br />

up-to-date <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion on products and prices. This feature shall be implemented with a search-eng<strong>in</strong>e,<br />

giv<strong>in</strong>g the user the possibility to fill out a form and get a list of match<strong>in</strong>g disks with their prices. Furthermore,<br />

general <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion on the company shall be displayed as well as <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion on Cybersound's staff and a list<br />

of job offers. The description of Cybersound's bus<strong>in</strong>ess activities is provided by the market<strong>in</strong>g department and<br />

not expected to change very often. The <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion on Cybersound's employees comes from another database<br />

<strong>in</strong> the personnel department. S<strong>in</strong>ce this data changes frequently, the correspond<strong>in</strong>g Web-pages should be generated<br />

on the fly. F<strong>in</strong>ally, as a special customer service, Cybersound wants to ma<strong>in</strong>ta<strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion on a number<br />

of cultural events. Figure 2 is a screenshot of the W3DT-Web-Designer show<strong>in</strong>g a model which represents<br />

this <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion.<br />

The navigational design <strong>in</strong> this simplified example is very easy. The homepage is a Menu - a page with the<br />

ma<strong>in</strong> purpose to present and expla<strong>in</strong> the mean<strong>in</strong>g of the part<strong>in</strong>g hyperl<strong>in</strong>ks. From Cybersound's homepage, the<br />

user can move on to one of the three ma<strong>in</strong> areas.<br />

CD-Form is the start<strong>in</strong>g po<strong>in</strong>t for the WWW-based <strong>in</strong>terface to the product database. This page conta<strong>in</strong>s a form<br />

with the <strong>in</strong>put fields necessary to restrict the number of records found. From this Form, the user moves on to a<br />

TPage, a dynamically generated Page, which will present the match<strong>in</strong>g records. The page Records is modeled<br />

as a Template s<strong>in</strong>ce the <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion presented to the user (the data fetched from the database) is retrieved on<br />

the fly. The l<strong>in</strong>k from CD-Form to Records is a Dynamic L<strong>in</strong>k. As a rule, every l<strong>in</strong>k lead<strong>in</strong>g to a Template<br />

must be a Dynamic L<strong>in</strong>k.<br />

The general <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion on Cybersound is structured by the Menu Company, which presents l<strong>in</strong>ks to Cybersound's<br />

bus<strong>in</strong>ess activities as well as to the Index Staff. Note that the <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion represented <strong>in</strong> the Pages<br />

Bus<strong>in</strong>ess Activities and Hir<strong>in</strong>g is of static nature - whenever the content needs to be updated, the correspond<strong>in</strong>g<br />

HTML-File needs to be modified.

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!