Customer Reviews

Web Engineering: The Discipline of Systematic Development of Web Applications

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This is one of those books that has value, but it's not the style of writing that appeals to me... Web Engineering edited by Gerti Kappel, Birgit Proll, Siegfried Reich, and Werner Retschitzegger. Let me explain...

Contents: An Introduction to Web Engineering; Requirements Engineering for Web Applications; Modeling Web Applications; Web Application Architectures; Technology-aware Web Application Design; Technologies for Web Applications; Testing Web Applications; Operation and Maintenance of Web Applications; Web Project Management; The Web Application Development Process; Usability of Web Applications; Performance of Web Applications; Security for Web Applications; The Semantic Web - The Network of Meanings in the Network of Documents; Glossary; Author Biographies; Bibliography; Credits; Index

This is set up as a compilation of chapters written by a number of contributors. It's better than most compilations, in that it's not a "best of" grab bag of writing styles and approaches. There is an overall structure, and all the subject matter conforms to that structure. It reminds me a lot of a text book that would be used in a college level course. And in fact, that's one of the target audiences. They also aim for the people in the real world of web software development, but the appeal would seem to be for those who are *very* structured in their approach. They aim to bring a structured software development methodology to the world of web development, complete with formal requirement gathering, modeling, etc. Considering how often you get fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants applications at the web level, there is definite benefit to bringing engineering processes to that style of application development. But the type of quick development/rapid iteration development you often see targeted for web applications is more in tune with agile methodologies that are lighter on process and documentation. Your view on the material here will be influenced greatly by your feelings and attitudes towards structured program development processes...

Yes, the quality of web applications can definitely be improved, and the material in this book would help. But to me, there was a bit too much methodology and process coupled with not enough practicality. But maybe if you get your readers in college before we old-timers can corrupt them, this could work... :)

This book is actually an article collection from several different writers. It has a very scientific feel to it and it is definitely not the most readable book out there compared to the more usual "commercial-type" web related titles. Someone could say that the book is written by university teachers for university students.

The book takes things very seriously and covers about everything in web application development that you can think of in a very technical and structural style. This of course is a downside because you can't cover everything about the subject in 384 pages. That is why the different topics in the book tend to be quite shallow in discussion and not getting deep enough into things. I was frustrated by this because despite the hard reading and time spent with the book you couldn't get enough value for your efforts.

I think the suitable target groups other than students are project managers and software developers that are beginning to work with web applications. Even though the book probably won't teach the hardcore web developer anything new, these two target groups will get a good overview and insight of web application development and its' differences with traditional software development. I wouldn't suggest this book for web designers unless they have a very strong technical background or/and competence.

One detail to be mentioned is that in many cases the book uses terms different from the ones we are used to in reading US and UK originated web literature. I think someone else would have named the book: "Web Development: The Discipline of Systematic Development of Web Applications"

Pretty comprehensive on web engineering topics. Very informative. It is not a pure web programming book, nor is it an interface design book; rather it is a book covering the complete life cycle of website development from an engineering perspective, including planning, analysis, design, programming, testing, maintenance, usability and other topics. I think it is a great textbook for an advanced web development class.

This book is for software engineers who work in the web development business and want to learn how to properly engineer and understand the process of development and usage of web applications.
This book is not for everyone. This an university text book which wasn't written for joe developer and exacts of its reader a fair understanding of its vocabulary and text.

This book provides the basic fundamentals and concepts of Web Engineering but nothing more than that. Experts in this field will probably not find this book useful