Model Driven Extraction of the Navigational Concern of Legacy Web Applications

Nowadays, there is a current trend in software industry to modernize traditional Web Applications (WAs) to Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). RIAs improve the user experience by combining the lightweight distribution architecture of the Web with the interface interactivity and computation power of desktop applications. In this context, Model Driven Web Engineering (MDWE) approaches have been extended with new modeling primitives to obtain the benefits provided by RIA features. However, during the last decade, widespread language-specific web frameworks have supported actual web system development. In this paper we present a model driven modernization process to obtain RIAs from legacy web systems based on such frameworks. model driven techniques reduce complexity and improve reusability of the process, making the development more systematic and less error prone. Being navigational information of upmost importance for the modernization process of a web application, the paper is focused on presenting the model driven extraction of such concern from the legacy system artifact, presenting the extraction tools and process.