Abstract

A Case Study in Documenting and Developing Frameworks Pierre D'enomm'ee A framework is a collection of abstract classes that provides an infrastructure common to a family of applications. The design of the framework fixes certain roles and responsibilities amongst the classes, as well as standard protocols for their collaboration. The variability within the family of applications is factored into socalled "hotspots", and the framework provides simple mechanisms to customize each hotspot. Customizing is typically done by subclassing an existing class of the framework and overriding a small number of methods. Sometimes, however, the framework insists that the customization preserves a protocol of collaboration between several subclasses, so customization requires the parallel development of these subclasses and certain of their methods. A framework exists to support the development of a family of applications. Typically a framework is developed by expert designers who have a deep knowle...

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