What is Requirement Analysis for Web Applications?

Requirement analysis for web applications consists of formulation, requirement gathering and analysis modeling.
- In formulation, goals and objectives and categories of users for web application are identified.
- In requirement gathering, communication between web engineering team and stakeholders deepens.
- In analysis modeling, content and functional requirements are listed and interaction scenarios are developed.

USER HIERARCHY
It is a good idea to build a user hierarchy. It provides you with a snapshot of user population and a cross check to help ensure that the needs of every user have been addressed. End-user categories interacting with web application are identified. As the number of user categories increases, developing a user hierarchy is advised. User categories provides an indication of functionality provided by WebApp and indicate need of use cases to be developed for each end-user in hierarchy.

DEVELOPING USE CASES
For each user category, use cases are developed which is described in user hierarchy. A use case is relatively informal i.e. a narrative paragraph that describes a specific interaction between user and web application. As the size of web application grows and analysis modeling becomes more rigorous, the preliminary use cases presented would have to be expanded to conform.

REFINING USE CASE MODEL
Use cases are organized into functional packages and each package is assessed to ensure that it is comprehensible, cohesive, loosely coupled and hierarchically shallow. The new use cases will be added to packages that have been defined, existing use cases will be refined and specific use cases might be reallocated to different packages.

How are web based systems formulated?

The basis of initiating a web application project is firstly, understanding the problem before you begin to solve it and be sure that the solution you conceive is one that people really want and secondly, plan the work before you begin performing it.
Formulation involves a sequence of web engineering actions which begins with identification of needs of business, defining features and functions, performing requirements gathering. Formulation focuses on the big picture; on the business needs and objectives and related information.

Beginning of formulation should be able to answer the main motivation for the web application, the objectives that a web application needs to fulfill and who will be using a web application. While building a web application, it should be build in a single sentence.
There are two type of goals that are identified. First one is informational goals that indicate an intention to provide specific content or information for the end user and second, the applicative goals that indicate the ability to perform some task within the web application.

Once both the goals are identified, a user profile is developed which captures important features that are related to users. Once the goals and user profile is created, formulation focuses on statement of scope for web application.

What is the framework for product metrics? What are the measurement principles?

A fundamental framework and a set of basic principles for the measurement of product metrics for software should be established. Talking in terms of software engineering:

- Measure provides a quantitative indication of extent, amount, dimension, size of an attribute of a product or process. Measure is established when a single data point has been collected.
- Measurement is an act of determining a measure. Measurement occurs when one or more data points are collected.
- Metric is the quantitative measure of the degree to which a system, component or process possess a given attribute. It relates individual measures in some way.
- Indicator is a metric or combination of metrics providing insight into software process, project or product itself.

There is a need to measure and control software complexity. It should be possible to develop measures of different attributes. These measures and metric can be used as independent indicators of the quality of analysis and design models.

Product metrics assist in evaluation of analysis and design models, gives an indication of the complexity and facilitate design of more effective testing. Steps for an effective measurement process are:
- Formulation which means the derivation of software measures and metrics.
- Collection is the way ti accumulate data required to derive the metrics.
- Analysis is the computation of metrics.
- Interpretation is the evaluation of metrics.
- Feedback is the recommendation derived after interpretation.

Metrics characterization and validation includes:
- Metric should have desirable mathematical properties.
- The value of metric should increase or decrease in the manner in which a software characteristic increases when positive trait occurs or decreases when undesirable traits are encountered.
- Metric should be validated empirically.

Overview of analysis for Web Applications

Web application analysis focuses on the information or content that is to be presented, the functions that are to be performed for the end user and behaviors that a web application exhibits as it presents content and performs functions.

Web application analysis model is comprised of a set of UML diagrams and text that describe content, interaction, function and configuration. Analysis of web applications is done when the following conditions are met:
- Web application to be built is large and complex.
- Number of stakeholders is large.
- Number of web engineers and other contributors is large.
- Web application's goals and objectives will effect the business bottom line.
- Success of web application will have strong bearing on the success of business.

Requirement analysis consists of formulation, requirement gathering and analysis modeling. In formulation, goals, objectives and categories of users are defined. In requirement gathering, communication between web engineering team and web application stakeholders intensifies.
Building a user hierarchy provides with a snapshot of the user population and a cross-check to ensure that the needs of every user have been addressed.

A use case diagram is created for each user category. Use cases are organized into functional packages and each package is assessed to ensure that it is comprehensible, cohesive, loosely coupled and hierarchically shallow.

Requirement analysis and modelling are iterative activities, new use cases are defined and added to packages, existing use cases will be refined and that specific use cases might be reallocated to different packages.