Web Site Development Methodologies - High Level Models and Methodologies for Information Systems - page 65

Fig. 4.2 A simplified model of RMM (adapted from Isakowitz et al. 1995 )

Navigational Design The course that will enable hypertext navigation is outlined
and designed. Each associative relationship appearing in the E-R+ diagram is
examined and represented in a Relationship Management (RM) diagram.

Conversion Protocol Design Developers use a group of conversion rules to convert
each element of the Relationship Management Data Model (RMDM) diagram into
an object in the target platform.

User Interface Design Design of screen layouts for every object appearing in the
diagram acquired in Step 3.

Runtime Behavior Design At this point, developers make decisions about which
link traversal, history, backtracking, and navigational mechanisms are to be applied.
It is important to consider the instability and the dimension of the domain in order
to choose whether node contents and link endpoints are to be developed during
application, or dynamically computed on demand at runtime.
Construction and Testing This last step consists on the implementation of the
application and testing.

Applications designed with this methodology are represented in RMDM, based
on the E-R model and the Hypermedia Design Method (HDM), which was one of
the

first methods created to identify the structure and interaction of hypermedia
applications. RMM combines a top-down and a bottom-up approach (Koch 1999 ).
The Data Models thus created allow the breaking apart of the attributes of a given
object or entity into slices, and the grouping of entities into m-slices. The concept of
slice is here meant to mediate between the logical architecture of the Web site, and
its presentation, as each slice contains the information that will be displayed
(Antoniol et al. 2000 ).
RMM is particularly adequate to the development and implementation of Web
sites focusing on relational databases. It allows for the portrayal and development of
the application domain in an abstract way, and it describes all elements of the
application domain regarding entity types, attributes, and relationships, through the
inclusion of the Relationship Data Models (Antoniol et al. 2000 ). However,