A Designing Model of XML-Dataweb Moussa Lo 1, 2 , Amrane Hocine 2 , Patrick Raffinat 2 {first-name.last-name}@univ-pau.fr 1 Laboratoire LANI - Université Gaston Berger Saint-Louis (Sénégal) 2 Laboratoire d’Informatique Université de Pau (France) Abstract We propose a designing method of Web application based on the new standard XML and on the dataweb notion. The content of the dataweb is obtained by an integration technique of heterogeneous data sources through a model called structural. The dataweb content is diffused through the Web according to a method leaned on a media model. The method consists to define at first the media model that is a view of the structural model and generate next the media base. A presentation model describes the user interface where each media object is associated with a presentation. In this paper, we are interesting in the structural and media models. Key words: Web application, dataweb, designing method, XML 1 Introduction The Web is more and more used as a platform for complex information systems. Some development tools have allowed to bring an appreciable assistance in the generation and the quick realization of Web applications, with the ASP (Microsoft Active Server Pages), JSP (Java Server Pages), PHP (Personal Home Page or Hypertext Preprocessor), PL-SQL (Oracle-Web) technologies, etc. These technologies allow extracting dynamically information from different data sources and to include them in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) pages patterns. In these applications, the designers have often privileged the presentation aspect to the detriment of the data structuration. This approach shows its limits during exploitation of these sites. The problems are often caused by the complexity of the sites, the need to have interoperability with other applications, the necessity of modification and the evident lack of interrogation possibility of HTML pages. Most generally, these systems can be considered as important information’s base integrating many heterogeneous data sources. The problem of these systems are the need of an adequate designing methodology, based on a quite rich data model to allow the realization of a specific information retrieval process linked to the domain user. The limits caused by the use of the HTML language during the information retrieval process and the emergence of the XML (eXtensible Markup Language) formalism, impose the use of XML for the construction of important Web sites: firm Web sites, information systems based on the Web, etc. We propose a designing method of Web applications based on the new standard XML and on the dataweb concept. In the MEDX 1 (Modeling and Exploration of Dataweb based on XML) project, a dataweb is defined as a unified and integrated view of a collection of data: (i) structured such as the ones stored in relational or object databases; and, (ii) semi-structured [1] as the data of Web. The dataweb integrates all the data of the information system in a global source; the use of XML allows having a uniform vision of those heterogeneous data. 1 This work is done in the context of the MEDX project, a research project of the SI-Web group (Computer Science Laboratory of Pau University).