Web Engineering - Old wine in new bottles? * Gerti Kappel 1 , Elke Michlmayr 2 , Birgit Pröll 3 , Siegfried Reich 4 , Werner Retschitzegger 5 1 Business Informatics Group (BIG), Vienna University of Technology Favoritenstr. 9, A-1040 Vienna, Austria gerti@big.tuwien.ac.at 2 Women’s Postgraduate College on Internet Technologies (WIT) Vienna University of Technology Favoritenstr. 9, A-1040 Vienna, Austria michlmayr@wit.tuwien.ac.at 3 Institute for Applied Knowledge Processing (FAW) Softwarepark Hagenberg, Hauptstraße 119, A-4232 Hagenberg, Austria birgit@faw.uni-linz.ac.at 4 Salzburg Research Jakob Haringer Straße 5/III, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria siegfried.reich@salzburgresearch.at 5 Department of Information Systems (IFS), Johannes Kepler University Linz Altenbergerstr. 69, A-4040 Linz, Austria werner@ifs.uni-linz.ac.at Abstract. Modern Web applications are full-fledged, complex software sys- tems. Therefore, the development of Web applications requires a methodologi- cally sound engineering approach called Web Engineering. It is not clear, how- ever, to which extent existing solutions from relevant areas, most notably soft- ware engineering can be reused as such for the development of Web applica- tions and consequently, if Web Engineering is really a discipline on its own. This paper highlights the characteristics of Web application development as found in existing literature thus providing a prerequisite for analyzing the ap- propriateness of existing engineering solutions. The characteristics are catego- rized according to four dimensions, comprising the software product itself, its development, its use and evolution as a cross-cutting concern. 1 Introduction The World Wide Web has a massive and permanent influence on our lives. Economy, industry, education, healthcare, public administration, entertainment – there is hardly a part in our daily life that has not been pervaded by the World Wide Web. The rea- * This research has been partly funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Science, and Culture, and the European Social Fund (ESF) under grant 31.963/46-VII/9/2002.