Restructuring Web Applications via Transformation Rules

During the evolution phase, the structure (pages and links) of a Web application tends unavoidably to degrade. A solution to reverse this degradation can be restructuring the Web application, but this work may take a lot of time and effort if conducted without appropriate tools. The theory of rewrite rules has been used with success in many real restructuring works on traditional software. Our idea is trying to apply rewrite rules to Web applications with the aim of restructuring them. The purpose of the paper is threefold: to describe our initial ideas on HTML rewrites to improve the quality of Web applications, to present our approach for implementing a tool, based on transformation rules, that can help designers in Web application restructuring and to define the starting point of the joint project between ITC-irst and Semantic Design