The World Wide Web has become a major delivery platform for a variety of complex and sophisticated enterprise applications in several domains. In addition to their inherent multifaceted functionality, these Web applications exhibit complex behaviour and place some unique demands on their usability, performance, security, and ability to grow and evolve. However, a vast majority of these applications continue to be developed in an ad hoc way, contributing to problems of usability, maintainability, quality and reliability.[1][2] While Web development can benefit from established practices from other related disciplines, it has certain distinguishing characteristics that demand special considerations. In recent years, there have been developments towards addressing these considerations.
As a discipline
Proponents of Web engineering supported the establishment of Web engineering as a discipline at an early stage of Web. Major arguments for Web engineering as a new discipline are:
Web-based Information Systems (WIS) development process is different and unique.[3]
Web engineering is multi-disciplinary; no single discipline (such as software engineering) can provide complete theory basis, body of knowledge and practices to guide WIS development.[4]
Issues of evolution and lifecycle management when compared to more 'traditional' applications.
Web-based information systems and applications are pervasive and non-trivial. The prospect of Web as a platform will continue to grow and it is worth being treated specifically.
^Pressman, Roger S (1998). "Can Internet Applications be Engineered?". IEEE Software. 15 (5): 104–110. doi:10.1109/ms.1998.714869.
^Roger S Pressman, "What a Tangled Web we Weave," IEEE Software, Jan/Feb 2001, Vol. 18, No.1, pp 18-21
^Gerti Kappel, Birgit Proll, Seiegfried, and Werner Retschitzegger, "An Introduction to Web Engineering," in Web Engineering, Gerti Kappel, et al. (eds.) John Wiley and Sons, Heidelberg, Germany, 2003
^Deshpande, Yogesh; Hansen, Steve (2001). "Web Engineering: Creating Discipline among Disciplines". IEEE Multimedia. 8 (1): 81–86. doi:10.1109/93.917974.
Robert L. Glass, "Who's Right in the Web Development Debate?" Cutter IT Journal, July 2001, Vol. 14, No.7, pp 6–0.
S. Ceri, P. Fraternali, A. Bongio, M. Brambilla, S. Comai, M. Matera. "Designing Data-Intensive Web Applications". Morgan Kaufmann Publisher, Dec 2002, ISBN1-55860-843-5
"Engineering Web Applications", by Sven Casteleyn, Florian Daniel, Peter Dolog and Maristella Matera, Springer, 2009, ISBN978-3-540-92200-1
"Web Engineering: Modelling and Implementing Web Applications", edited by Gustavo Rossi, Oscar Pastor, Daniel Schwabe and Luis Olsina, Springer Verlag HCIS, 2007, ISBN978-1-84628-922-4
"Cost Estimation Techniques for Web Projects", Emilia Mendes, IGI Publishing, ISBN978-1-59904-135-3
"Web Engineering - The Discipline of Systematic Development of Web Applications", edited by Gerti Kappel, Birgit Pröll, Siegfried Reich, and Werner Retschitzegger, John Wiley & Sons, 2006
"Web Engineering", edited by Emilia Mendes and Nile Mosley, Springer-Verlag, 2005
"Web Engineering: Principles and Techniques", edited by Woojong Suh, Idea Group Publishing, 2005
"Building Web Applications with UML" (2nd edition), by Jim Conallen, Pearson Education, 2003
"Information Architecture for the World Wide Web" (2nd edition), by Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld, O'Reilly, 2002
"Web Site Engineering: Beyond Web Page Design", by Thomas A. Powell, David L. Jones and Dominique C. Cutts, Prentice Hall, 1998
"Designing Data-Intensive Web Applications", by S. Ceri, P. Fraternali, A. Bongio, M. Brambilla, S. Comai, M. Matera. Morgan Kaufmann Publisher, Dec 2002, ISBN1-55860-843-5
Pressman, R.S., 'Applying Web Engineering', Part 3, Chapters 16–20, in Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Perspective, Sixth Edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2004. http://www.rspa.com/'
