Hyper-programming web applications

Abstract

The Web has become the dominant platform for the development of a large class of multi-user applications. In contrast to conventional approaches, current Web application development technology places little emphasis on system enforcement of static program safety properties. This departure from historical developments has the result that users of Web applications are forced to endure failure modes that would never be accepted from conventional applications. This paper describes work addressing this problem by applying a technology known as hyper-programming to the development of Web applications. This approach provides a number a program safety bene ts. For example, not only does our system prevent 404 errors for hyperlinks between parts of an application, but it also guarantees that the action attached to forms take parameters that are consistent with the form inputs, in terms of name, number and type. In this paper we describe HyperWeb, a prototype implementation of the hyper-programming concept applied to Web application development. This system provides Web applications with system enforced program safety properties. Enforcement of program safety properties begins at program composition time (coding) and is continuously maintained thereafter, thereby promoting improved Web application quality and providing an enhanced user experience.