Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Availability

Open Access Thesis

Keywords

Automatic programming (Computer science); Software engineering; Web site development; Academic theses;

Abstract

In this thesis I propose a new code generation approach to developing data-intensive web-based applications. I hypothesize that it is possible to build a code generator which will significantly improve development of data-intensive web-based applications by generating at least 50% of the data access code based on a specification of the application's data model. My main argument is that the application's data model is sufficient for deriving most of the data access functionality. To test this hypothesis I designed a data definition language, came up with a set of rules for deriving data access operations from the application's data model, implemented a code generator, and tested my approach on three applications. The applications used to test the hypothesis included a web-based tool used in criminology for eyewitness identification, a financial reporting system, and a set of web sites for a student association, including a blog, a career web site, several regular web sites and a content management system. The results were two-fold. On the one hand, the approach proved to be efficient in the sense that 84% - 99% of the data access code was generated automatically-which supported the study's hypothesis. On the other hand, only 20% - 35% of the generated code was actually used by the application. Therefore, considering the amount of generated code, the approach proved to be inefficient. Nevertheless, I maintain that the suggested approach still has the potential for bringing positive results, which may be discovered through further research.

Year of Submission

2008

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Department of Computer Science

First Advisor

V. Eugene Wallingford

Second Advisor

Kevin C. O'Kane

Third Advisor

Douglas J. Shaw

Comments

If you are the rightful copyright holder of this thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to scholarworks@uni.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.

Date Original

2008

Object Description

1 PDF file (106 leaves)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

Share

COinS