Teaching Web Programming

An Approach Rooted in Database Principles

Francesco Maiorana

Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, University of Catania, Viale A. Doria, 6, Catania, Italy

Keywords: Web Programming, Database Driven Applications, Security, Transaction, Stored Procedure.

Abstract: The World Wide Web has become a medium not only for delivering information but also for providing

applications that can be used by a variety of instruments, including mobile devices. For these reasons the

importance of teaching these skills as well as the difficulties of organizing a vast amount of concepts and

technologies in a fast-paced environment driven by strong industrial interest and competition are widely

recognized. This work discusses a case study on teaching web programming, presenting an approach

suitable for both high school and university courses. The main innovation of the curriculum is the content

presentation, which focuses on small incremental steps, spanning the majority of term lab sessions, as well

as a teaching a case study which centres on user login management. The case study covers all the major

topics in web programming and teaches students to develop, as well as apply and integrate, major database

concepts such as transactions, stored procedures and security issues. This lays the foundation for developing

a larger project, which is suggested as the final step of the curriculum.

1 INTRODUCTION

According to the National Science Foundation

(2012), (Bureau of Labor Statistics), the

occupational outlook for Information Security

Analysts, Web Developers, and Computer Network

Architects between 2010-2020 is expected to

increase at a rate of 22%, which is faster than

average. The strong interest is confirmed by the

increase in web technologies. In (Gundotra, 2009),

for example, during his keynote speech at the

Google I/O 2009 conference, the Vice President of

Engineering at Google stated that, “The web has

won. It has become the dominant programming

model of our time”.

At the same time, Academia has given web

development an increasing level of importance,

reflected by the large number of related courses,

from entry level to more advanced. Also in research

there is a flourishing of conferences and special

issue journals such as (Connolly and Miller, 2013)

with “two inter-related aims. The first of these is to

communicate current approaches to teaching web

development. The second is to reignite the

conversation about what role, if any, that web

development should have in current computing

curricula”. The same trend is also evident in K-12

education, where web development is recognized as

an important topic in all recently revised curriculum.

These include (CSTA 2011), (Computing at

Schools, 2012), (New Zealand Ministry of

Education 2010), as well as new curricula designed

at the national level, such as (Astrachan, 2012) or

initiatives developed around innovative ideas on

how to teach introductory programming using web

technologies such as Code Avengers

(http://www.codeavengers.com/) or CodeHS

(http://codehs.com/). Web development is also

present in undergraduate and graduate curriculum

such as (ACM/IEEE, 2013), (ACM/AIS, 2010),

(ACM/IEEE, 2008).

From the above cited works, the interest in the

subject is evident. However, an analysis of the

curricula reveals that it is difficult to cope with all

the content and technologies within a single course,

especially in high school or in introductory

university courses. As proposed by (Connolly, 2011)

and (Maiorana, 2013 (a)), the topics should be

covered in three courses: basic markup languages

and Cascading Style Sheet in the first course; client

side programming in the second course; and server

side programming in the third course, with usability

and interface design issue spanning all three courses.

Other research such as (Wang, 2009) points to the

Maiorana F..

Teaching Web Programming - An Approach Rooted in Database Principles.

DOI: 10.5220/0004849300490056

In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2014), pages 49-56

ISBN: 978-989-758-021-5

 2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

need for subdividing the web programming

curriculum into more courses, suggesting a two-

course curriculum.

This work presents a curriculum suited for either

a university course on web programming or for a

third-level high school course, in accordance with

the CSTA curriculum. The curriculum was field

tested in a high school at the 13

/13

grade with

students enrolled in a Computer Science

specialization course. The curriculum, by leveraging

on prerequisite database knowledge such as Entity

Relationship model (E/R) and Data Manipulation

language (SQL), focuses on server side web

programming and offers the possibility, using simple

examples and guided practical lab sessions, to

present and practically apply, as well as verify,

advanced database concepts such as stored

procedures, transactions and security issues, both at

the database and at the web application levels.

The paper is organized as follows: section 2

briefly reviews the literature on teaching web

development; section 3 presents the context of the

teaching experience, the pedagogical model, the

contents and how the course was taught; section 4

discusses a first course evaluation, highlighting

positive and negative aspects; and section 5 presents

the conclusions and highlights future work.

2 STATE OF THE ART IN

TEACHING WEB

PROGRAMMING

In the research carried out by (Grove, 2007), the

authors review ten years of research articles on

teaching web development in colleges and

universities. The authors report that the diversity of

protocols and programming languages required for

web development presents a problem. Mastering all

the knowledge required is deemed “unreasonable”

while some practical level of understanding in all the

technologies is considered necessary. This

conclusion correlates with the necessity to divide,

especially in high school, the curriculum into at least

three courses. This is reinforced by (Park, 2013)

where a taxonomy of student errors in HTML and

CSS is analysed, reinforcing the pedagogical idea

that even entry level languages, not considered as

“computationally expensive” as many other

languages, require developing computational skills

such as checking syntax errors and debugging. The

work makes use of an educational tool, openHTML,

a web editor developed by the authors. Another e-

learning system designed for improving web

programming skills, is presented in (Elgamal, 2013),

and offers an integrated environment for web

programming.

Among recent case studies and teaching

experiences on web programming at the university

level, it is possible to recall the following notable

research: (Liu, 2011) presenting challenges and tools

used; (Laverty, 2011) where the authors highlight

the challenge of an “efficient delivery of a dynamic

web development, database-driven platform”;

(Baatard, 2007) presenting a course using the PHP

language and addressing security issues; (Noonan,

2007) (Wang, 2006) and (Olan, 2009) presenting a

course focused on server side programming and

database interaction; (Tao, 2010) reporting on the

positive effect of encouraging students to use code

developed by others; (Hollingsworth, 2010) where

the Google Cloud App was used along with servlets

and Java Server Pages (JSP); (Gousie, 2006)

reporting on an interdisciplinary approach to

teaching web programming, graphics and design in a

course for non-majors; (Stepp, 2009) presenting a

CS 1.5 web programming course, and suggesting

that educators present form and PHP scripting as

early as possible; and (Adams, 2007) presenting a

course developed around a Web project. The use of

frameworks, recently reviewed in (Chao, 2013), is

not recommended in introductory web programming

courses.

From this brief literature review it is possible to

highlight the following points:

 the difficulty and challenges in selecting the

topics and providing sufficient depth (Liu,

2011)

 the rich set of technologies used, the lack of

their integration and their development at a fast

pace

 the importance of delivering a dynamic,

database-driven web development

 the necessity to span the content of the topics

among several courses and the interdisciplinary

aspect of the topic.

This work reports a detailed practical experience

suited for a web programming module and focuses

on how these activities offer the possibility to

practically explore and experiment with advanced

database concepts such as stored procedure,

transaction and security in the realm of web

programming. The use of these advanced database

concepts in web programming represents a unique

case compared to other courses described in

literature. The application of the blending of the

proposed pedagogical approach, although

CSEDU2014-6thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation

representing a well-established practice, is presented

in a particular context and within a particular

discipline and will hopefully provide an initial

insight in the described setting.

3 CONTEXT, PEDAGOGICAL

MODEL AND CONTENT OF

THE EDUCATIONAL

EXPERIENCE

This work presents a case study dealing with an

educational experience in teaching web

programming in an Italian high school. The class

comprised 14 students, 12 male and 2 female,

between the ages of 18 and 20. The students in Italy

typically start school at the age of 6, with a few

exceptions who start at 5, and after 13 years of

school, finish at 19. Among the students, there were

two who had to repeat several years of school. The

class was the final course of a computer science

curriculum lasting five years. In the last three years

the students attended two types of courses each year:

the first type of course centers on programming and

software development and the second type of course

centers on hardware and networking. In the third

year programming course, the students have to learn

basic programming, problem solving and algorithm

design in an imperative language such as C, as well

as basic web page design using HTML and CSS. In

the fourth year the students learn object- oriented

programming along with event driven

programming. The students extend the web design

topic by writing JavaScript code on the client side.

In the fifth year the students in the programming

course deal with Database design and SQL language

in the first term and web programming in the second

term. This content is accompanied by the second

course where students learn networking architecture,

both hardware and software, client server

programming and security issues, such as

cryptography. The reported teaching experience

deals with the second term of the software course

focused on web programming technologies, where

the students are required to master database design

with E/R diagram and SQL languages both for Data

Manipulation and for querying. The course in the

fifth year was divided into 28 weeks, 12 of which

were dedicated to the web programming curriculum.

The final two weeks allowed for individual and

group project finalization. Each week consisted of a

two-hour session for theory, ground discussions and

assessment, and three one-hour lab sessions divided

into two hours plus a one hour meeting, for a total of

three meetings per week.

The course schedule for the first term is reported

in Table 1. For a deeper discussion of the database

curriculum the reader can refer to (Giordano, 2013

Table 1: Course schedule for the first term.

Unit Argument Hours

E/R, entity, primary key, attribute 2

Projection and filtering using one table.

Regular expressions

User defined functions 6

User interface for parametric queries 4

Associations 1-N, 1-1; association

attribute, multiple associations, association

with role.

Join and set operations 8

Associations N-N. 6

Sub-queries. Nested and correlated sub-

queries

Ternary and n-ary associations 8

Group by and nested queries 6

Associative entity, Normalization. 2

Having clause 4

6 Recursive associations. 6

Total 70

The bibliography for students comprised an

Italian book together with selected parts from two

leading database books (Atzeni, 1999) (Elmasri,

2011), as well as teacher notes. The adopted

pedagogical model, in accordance with modern

constructivist theory (Duffy, 1992), was student-

centered, where the students in each lab session are

required to design and implement a solution to small

problems, presented as specific questions requesting

to perform a particular task. The questions guide the

students to a final lab session goal of producing an

application solving a specific problem or applying a

new technology. An example of such questions for

the 7

session, as listed in Table 3, is given in Table

2. This approach has the advantage of guiding

students in the complex task of mastering different

technologies, programming languages, as well as in

learning and understanding the deep and

fundamental concepts of database and web

programming.

According to the revised Bloom taxonomy

(Anderson, 2005), the questions guide the students

in climbing all the levels of the taxonomy: students

using self-directed work along with the lab

assignment questions are guided in the cognitive

process of remembering, understanding and

TeachingWebProgramming-AnApproachRootedinDatabasePrinciples

applying. More gifted students are able to analyze

and evaluate, while a guided inquiry approach is

used during the lab session to allow the other

students to analyze and evaluate their solutions. The

creative aspect is saved for the end of the lab, in the

form of deeper questions, self-directed exploration

and experimentation and, most importantly, in the

final project, where it is suggested that the students

apply all the course knowledge in building a

complete, self-chosen web application. The final

project can also be done in self-selected groups of

students.

Table 2: An example of a lab session assignment.

N Questions

1 Create, using the SQL language a database called store.

2 Create, using the SQL language, the following logical

model:

Person (id, Lastname, Firstname, age, sex, BornDate,

salary, StartTime, CivilStatus)

where CivilStatus can only have a value chosen from

(single, nubile, conjugated, separated)

3 Insert data in the Person and login table. Verify that the

reference integrity constraint works.

4 Create a stored procedure to insert a person. Create a

function to insert a person returning the ID of the last

inserted person. Verify that the stored procedure and

stored function work by calling them

5 Create a stored procedure to insert in the login table and

verify it. Verify that the reference integrity constraint

works.

6 Create an HTML page containing a form to insert the data

of a person including username and password.

7 Create a PHP page to insert in the database the data

relative to the person including the login information.

Verify that the transaction mechanism works by forcing

the insertion in the login table of a row with a non-existent

value for the foreign key.

8 Write a stored procedure that, by using the transaction,

inserts a row in the person and login table, thus inserting

all the information pertinent to the person. Simplify the

PHP code in order to perform a single call to this stored

procedure. Compare the solutions developed in steps 7

and 8.

The lab sessions were designed in an incremental

way around the management of the login process

and user registration. It was decided, for didactic and

security reasons, to divide the user data and the login

data (username and password) into two tables

allowing the students to present and practically

apply important concepts such as stored procedure,

transaction, security issues and security advantages

in using stored procedure.

A modern object-oriented API such as the Portable

Database Object (PDO) was used for database

access. The login process allowed students to deal

with the main aspects of web programming: HTML,

forms, PHP, SQL, session and cookies to keep track

of the data across the web pages; data validation

took place both on the client side using JavaScript

and regular expressions, and on the server side using

PHP function and database stored procedures. The

choice of the model allowed for the application and

verification, with few lines of code, of sophisticated

mechanisms such as transactions and stored

procedure invoker and creator security models, as

well as SQL commands for security management.

Possible lab extensions to the basic login page could

provide forgotten password functionalities, date and

time of last login, count of unsuccessful logins on

the basis of the username and a personalized

welcome message, just to name a few.

Throughout the entire term an inverted classroom

approach (Gannod, 2008) was used where the

students were asked to pre-read the material, thereby

leaving time for practical work during the lab

sessions and discussion during the theory sessions.

These discussions included solutions to exercises

and case studies with critical comparisons of

different approaches to solving the problems. The

material was based on the textbook as well as the

teacher's notes. Modern web 2.0 technologies

(www.blogger.com/ ) (sites.google.com/ ) were used

to deliver content, encouraging students to use wiki

technologies to develop a personal e-portfolio where

solutions to case studies and projects were posted to

allow peers and instructors to leave formative

feedback (Giordano, 2004), (Giordano, 2013 (a, b).

The free Easy PHP (http://www.easyphp.org/)

Windows Apache MYSQL PHP (WAMP) was used

on a Windows platform. Table 3 reports the course

schedule with the major lab assignment topics.

The lab sessions were very fruitful and allowed

for student self-discovery. For example, during a lab

session a student working on a machine with an

early version of PHP verified that the foreign key

constraint does not work with the MYSQL MyISAM

engine. It was suggested that the students use the

manual to find a way to change the engine and

verify that the foreign key constraint is implemented

in other engines such as the InnoDB. The side effect

was to push students to improve technical manual

reading capabilities, particularly for SQL syntax

such as DML instructions (MySQL, 2013).

This approach was extended to the PHP manual

(PHP, 2013), thus improving a technical skill

required in working environments. Overall, the

CSEDU2014-6thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation

Table 3: Course schedule and lab assignments.

N Topic Lab assignment #h

Three tier

architecture

Install and configure a

WAMP framework

2 HTML review Login form creation 3

Database connection

and data insertion

through stored

procedure.

Stored procedures for

insertion in one table and

their use with PDO.

Parameters. Insert into the

person table.

Stored procedure for

updating and

deleting data.

Use of HTML forms and

stored procedure to update

and delete data. Manage

the person and login table.

Get and POST method.

Stored procedures

for retrieving data

with and without

parameters.

Retrieving data using

stored procedures and PDO

and presenting them in

HTML table. CSS review.

List of registered users.

Transaction: begin,

commit and rollback

PHP code for managing

transaction. SQL code for

managing transaction.

Insertion in the Person and

Use of transaction to

insert, update and

modify data across

multiple tables

Use of transaction to insert,

modify data in multiple

tables. Management of the

person and login table

Cookies and

sessions

Keep track of username

and ID across multiple web

pages

SQL command for

security

Granting and revoking

privileges to users. Stored

procedure for granting and

revoking privileges

Security model of

stored procedures:

definer and invoker

model.

Cryptography.

Use and comparison of

different security models to

automatically manage user

creation and management.

Cryptography functions in

PHP.

Client side form

validation using

JavaScript and

regular expressions

Validate the Person and

Server side data

validation.

Using PHP and stored

procedure to validate the

person and login data at the

server side

Total 60

approach was useful in guiding the students in the

complex process of designing web applications,

allowing for an incremental project that pushed the

students to develop limited but working projects in

each lab session, refining the solution throughout the

semester. This approach avoided teaching each topic

individually but rather fostered step-by-step

teaching, through incremental integration.

Initially, the students were reluctant to follow the

approach due to the added level of abstraction

introduced by the stored procedures and hence the

higher cognitive effort required to master them.

While proceeding with this approach, their opinions

changed positively and the students appreciated the

benefit of the method in terms of performance and

security. Likewise, they appreciated the reduced

burden in writing PHP code and the possibility to

resolve the basic database management task with the

same approach and by using a similar design

procedure.

The teachers' evaluation of the experience, by

comparison with previous classes with the same

coursework and the same teachers, where more

emphasis was given to physical database design,

indexing and query performance (Maiorana (b),

2013) thus leaving less time for more extensive web

programming, was positive, mainly due to the

possibility of exposing the students to a richer set of

technology with a tighter link to database

technologies and concepts. Overall, 6 students were

able to complete all the guided lab exercises

independently, with little guidance in the first lab

session, 2 students completed the lab session but

required more support from the teachers, 6 students

struggled due to the difficulty and deficiency both in

concepts such as procedure and functions that were

covered in the previous years, and to a deficiency in

the mastering of some topics related to the first part

of the course and finally 1 student was not able to

complete the course and pass the year due to the

numerous insufficient results in other disciplines.

The final student grades in the discipline were: 4

students received an A, 3 students a B, 5 students a

C, 1 student a D and 2 students an F.

4 COURSE EVALUATION AND

DISCUSSION

The course was evaluated by using student and

teacher feedback, obtained by informal discussion

and formal colloquia inside the class meetings and

by assessing and evaluating student work in each lab

session. The feedback from students as well as

teachers was positive.

Students were initially overwhelmed by the

complication introduced by stored procedure and the

TeachingWebProgramming-AnApproachRootedinDatabasePrinciples

necessity to manage and discriminate different

working environments such as the MYSQL

database, the PHP scripting languages as well as

HTML. When the initial difficulties were overcome,

thanks to a series of lab sessions focusing on similar

concepts and technologies (e.g., stored procedure for

inserting, deleting, updating and retrieving data from

a single table), the students particularly appreciated

using stored procedure and advanced database

concepts which allowed them to use less code,

perform canonical tasks such as inserting, updating,

deleting and retrieving data in a canonical and

recurring way, changing only the SQL command to

be used in the stored procedure as well as the

number and type of parameters.

From our colleagues' point of view, the approach

allowed us to present and master advanced database

concepts. The approach allowed for the sharpening

and augmentation of database knowledge required

by all the students in the final nation-wide state

examination. The step-by-step approach avoided

students getting lost in the multiple environment

scenario typical of Web programming, despite the

coverage of advanced topics.

The approach allowed students to experiment

and easily verify important topics, such as

transactions, by verifying their effects. Examples of

this verification approach include: inserting a

violating reference key data as the second step in a

transaction, thereby allowing students to verify the

missing effect in the first step; looking for the data

stored on the client side (the cookie) and on the

server side (the session file), thus allowing students

to distinguish between the two concepts and their

effects; verifying the different foreign key

mechanisms with different MYSQL engines, and

consequently mastering this important topic.

The assessment of the lab sessions revealed,

through analysis of the results and of the grades

assigned, three levels of achievement: the more

gifted students were the first to proceed alone and

expand the proposed lab session assignments; a

second group of students were able to follow the

steps and work through a solution to each step with

minimal guidance; finally, a third group of students

required particular attention and support to work

through the exercises, with some of them falling

behind and not meeting the deadlines. This division

was reflected in the final grade of the module, as

noted before. Despite the increased complexity of

the course topic, the results correlate with and are

slightly better than past experiences.

Overall, compared to a previous course taught by

the same teachers, a deeper mastering of the web

programming material was observed. Whereas only

two students from the previous course were able to

apply and discuss stored procedures and transactions

in their final project (Maiorana (b), 2013), up to

eight were able to do so in this course. This was due

to the different teaching approach used, one that did

not use the step-by-step assignment method in the

lab session and which also dedicated fewer hours to

the web programming module in order to explain

another important topic, i.e., indexing, which is now

an elective course in the new CS curriculum

(ACM/IEEE, 2013).

5 CONCLUSIONS

A web programming curriculum was proposed,

based on the results of a teaching experience in the

final year at an Italian high school. The pedagogical

approach was based on lab sessions requiring

students to design and implement a solution with a

small sequence of steps leading to a working artifact.

The lab sessions subsequently refined each other by

presenting and applying new concepts or techniques

and incrementally improving a project spanning all

the lab sessions which centered on the management

of the login information on a website. In solving the

major topics of web programming, linking them to

advanced database concepts such as transaction,

stored procedure and security models, topics not

usually covered in a high school or undergraduate

setting. At the same time the concepts, mastered by

the majority of the students, allowed for an easy

framing of a solution pattern for the management of

data in Web applications. A preliminary course

assessment has also been presented.

The presented curriculum, according to Maiorana

(2013 (a)) is suited for a third-level course dealing

with server side programming. The course represents

the concluding phase, following a tag-based

language and Cascading Style Sheet in the first

course and client side programming in the second

course. The proposed approach presents the

advantages of a strong relationship with database

concepts, allowing at the same time to present initial

issues related to web interfaces and usability.

The proposed curriculum and pedagogical approach

can be used in both high school and university

courses, allowing the students to present and

practically apply all the concepts suited for the third-

level curriculum in the proposed three-level course

architecture. Regarding further research, the

following is planned: a deeper qualitative and

CSEDU2014-6thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation

quantitative course assessment compared to a

previous class with the same coursework and the

expansion of the curriculum by using frameworks,

such as jQuery Mobile (

http://jquerymobile.com/), to

develop mobile web applications (Costanzo, 2013).

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