Qualitative Metrics for Development Technologies Evaluation in Database-driven Information Systems

Database-driven information systems are nowadays widespread in various application domains. The technologies employed to manage the database itself are generally built on the same data model – the relational model – and their evolution is mainly related to their physical performances, without significant changes in their conceptual foundation. By contrast, the user interface development technologies are changing at an increasing pace, which cause important problems related to learning costs and compatibilities with the existing systems. This paper provides a set of qualitative metrics which can be used to evaluate and compare different technologies, based on the most important conceptual objectives of database-driven information systems.