Adapting traditional web applications to the new user interfaces provided by rich internet applications

Abstract

Rich Internet Applications (RIA) technology leads to new opportunities in Web development, adding a new level of usability and overcoming several limitations of traditional Web applications. However, there are still a few gaps in RIA development, namely the lack of methodologies enabling direct evolution of traditionally developed Web applications into this new concept. This paper describes a methodology to adapt User Interfaces (UI) from Web 1.0 into Web 2.0 introducing RIA capabilities, maintaining the business logic and data access layers legacy.The main system architecture is maintained and the new concept is achieved by adding a new Web services encapsulation layer responsible to intermediate the business logic layer and the new UI layer, providing a seamless and dynamic integration. For validating this methodology, a prototype was developed by applying and evaluating the suggested methodology. The results obtained validate that this methodology is appropriate for the given problem.