Half-automated generation of secure, high-performance Web/DB software

Web technologies are evolving rapidly to meet the needs of various World Wide Web-based information systems. While it is possible to write prototype versions of Web-based software (Webware), they are often insecure and suffer from performance problems. It is becoming more difficult to implement secure, high-performance Webware, because of the broad technical background required to implement such software. In this paper, we first introduce the notion of a multi-level Webware description. We then describe our framework for the semi-automated generation of Web/database (DB) software. By translating the multi-level Webware description into a consistent set of code for Web browsers, Web servers and DB systems, we intend to provide a time-efficient environment for building secure, high-performance Web/DB software. We have implemented our framework in the Perl language. The implementation is evaluated through our experiences in building several applications.