Software maintenance is expensive and difficult because software is complex and maintenance requiresunderstanding code written by someone else. A key component of maintainability is program understanding.Program understanding, however, is problematic for software developed on the web because web applicationscomprise a mix of technologies and because the rapid pace of web development often means formaldevelopment practices, including documentation are ignored. This research proposes an approach, calledREADABLE, that is aimed at improving understanding and maintainability of web applications. The READABLEapproach achieves this goal by making the control flow among web application components visible in aseparate layer. This layer allows easier program understanding for the software developers, and can also beused by a controller for execution of the application, making the web application self-documenting. Acontrolled laboratory experiment shows that the READABLE approach improves program understanding.
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