Consistent Web site updating based on bidirectional transformation

摘要

A transformation-based Web site can keep the contents of a Web site consistent by furnishing a single database and a set of transformation programs, each generating a Web page from the database. However, when someone notices an error or stale content on a Web page in this style of Web site construction, the Web site maintainer must access a possibly huge database to update the corresponding content. In this paper, we propose a new approach to Web site construction based on bidirectional transformation, and report our design and implementation of a practical updating system called Vu-X. We bring the idea of bidirectional transformation to Web site construction, describing not only a forward transformation for generating Web pages from the database but also a backward transformation for reflecting modifications on the Web pages to the database. By use of the bidirectional transformation language Bi-X, we can obtain both transformations only by specifying a forward transformation. Our Vu-X system is implemented as a Web server built upon the Bi-X transformation engine, which can keep the content of Web sites consistent by updating Web pages in WYSIWYG style on Web browsers.