Models and tools for designing data-intensive web applications

Summary form only given, as follows. Data-intensive WEB applications, whose pages are automatically generated from large data sources, are becoming more and more relevant. Their design requires orthogonal abstractions, for the definition of the structure, derivation, navigation, composition, and presentation of WEB sites. While the abstractions for structure, derivation, and presentation of WEB sites are classical, those for navigation and composition are quite original. This talk will focus on the model which is used for navigation and composition of WEB pages, and then on the process which is required in order to produce design specifications, including the problems due to extracting data from heterogeneous data sources. These ingredients are used in Torii, a tool environment for the specification and automatic generation of EB sites, developed in the context of a large Esprit project. The talk will present a preliminary description of the tools which are currently under development.