A Decision Making Model for Web Applications Design

Selecting the right Web application components to build up an intended application involve some profound thoughts and hard decisions to make. In this paper, we present a model to ease the decision making process. The model is based on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) paradigm. COTS techniques aim to reduce development time and hence decrease cost compared to a traditional system development. First, an identification of components from the application requirements is made. Then, for each component, we specify a formal model, which is called the ideal-component. First order predicate calculus is used as a tool to formalize application requirements and obtain these formal models. The evaluation of a possible-component, from a vendor, begins with understanding the features and then an acceptance indicator is calculated. The acceptance equation combines three key factors: requirements and features match, vendor-viability and maintainability. Maintainability is a costly phase in any software system and this model caters for this issue during the evaluation process. The model is being investigated in small-scale systems with successful results