Web Engineering

The term Web Engineering refers to the development of Web applications, such as portal systems, shopping sites (see e-commerce) or other complex sites. In general, Web Engineering is not only the development but also the development and expansion of previously created websites.

The creator and developer of web applications are also referred to as web developers.

Web Engineering transmits the methods of software engineering (including software engineering ) for developing web applications and extends over the entire life cycle of a Web application. It will be developed standardized engineering- processes that take into account the differences to classical software engineering.

Differentiation from traditional software development

Web applications differ in some aspects from traditional software. The differences to software engineering is based particularly on the use of hypermedia documents which, together with the browser, the user interface and the underlying network architecture with client / server paradigm, HTTP or TCP / IP protocol and address resolution over the domain Name System. At a conceptual level, this applies to the navigation within the application and presentation of the content. Similarly, Web applications need user models, as document based or system-based on the WWW user management is not common and each application itself a user identification must ensure - insofar as it is necessary. On the technical level, Web applications are characterized by the interplay of very different techniques ( for example, HTTP, PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Java, XML, SQL, and others) that can work on different platforms on the client side. At the process level, the web engineering also requires the inclusion of the care and maintenance of the software, as subsequent amendments and adaptations are common here.

Model-based processes of Web Engineering usually extend the classical modeling to models for the navigation, the presentation and the user. Here is for the graphical notation of UML models of the standard, which will be extended accordingly to the requirements of the WWW. However, not all can be personalized with UML model aspects reflect well, such as the presentation model, what other means such as storyboards must be used.

Among the specific application and research areas also include the Semantic Web, Cloud Computing, Mobile Applications, Usability, Web information retrieval and also Web Service Engineering.