Software framework

<h2 id="rationale">Rationale</h2>

The designers of software frameworks aim to facilitate software developments by allowing designers and programmers to devote their time to meeting software requirements rather than dealing with the more standard low-level details of providing a working system, thereby reducing overall development time.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:2" href="#fn:2">2</a> For example, a team using a <a href="/facts/Web_framework/8f1CVHDX">web framework</a> to develop a banking website can focus on writing code particular to banking rather than the mechanics of request handling and <a href="/facts/State_management/2cWoHEqg">state management</a>.
Frameworks often add to the size of programs, a phenomenon termed "<a href="/facts/Code_bloat/qvQDUkC2">code bloat</a>". Due to customer-demand-driven applications needs, both competing and complementary frameworks sometimes end up in a product. Further, due to the complexity of their APIs, the intended reduction in overall development time may not be achieved due to the need to spend additional time learning to use the framework; this criticism is clearly valid when a special or new framework is first encountered by development staff. If such a framework is not used in subsequent job taskings, the time invested in learning the framework can cost more than purpose-written code familiar to the project's staff; many programmers keep copies of useful <a href="/facts/Boilerplate_code/xbYAfVbW">boilerplate code</a> for common needs.
However, once a framework is learned, future projects can be faster and easier to complete; the concept of a framework is to make a one-size-fits-all solution set, and with familiarity, code production should logically rise. There are no such claims made about the size of the code eventually bundled with the output product, nor its relative efficiency and conciseness. Using any library solution necessarily pulls in extras and unused extraneous assets unless the software is a compiler-object linker making a tight (small, wholly controlled, and specified) executable module.
The issue continues, but a decade-plus of industry experience has shown that the most effective frameworks turn out to be those that evolve from <a href="/facts/Code_refactoring/gkw9oVTE">re-factoring</a> the common code of the enterprise, instead of using a generic "one-size-fits-all" framework developed by third parties for general purposes. An example of that would be how the user interface in such an application package as an office suite grows to have common look, feel, and data-sharing attributes and methods, as the once disparate bundled applications, grow unified into a suite that is tighter and smaller; the newer/evolved suite can be a product that shares integral utility libraries and user interfaces.
This trend in the controversy brings up an important issue about frameworks. Creating a framework that is elegant, versus one that merely solves a problem, is still rather a craft than a science. "Software <a href="/facts/Elegance/NrPbHNjc">elegance</a>" implies clarity, conciseness, and little waste (extra or extraneous functionality, much of which is user-defined). For those frameworks that generate code, for example, "elegance" would imply the creation of code that is clean and comprehensible to a reasonably knowledgeable programmer (and which is therefore readily modifiable), versus one that merely generates correct code. The elegance issue is why relatively few software frameworks have stood the test of time: the best frameworks have been able to evolve gracefully as the underlying technology on which they were built advanced. Even there, having evolved, many such packages will retain legacy capabilities bloating the final software as otherwise replaced methods have been retained in parallel with the newer methods.

<h2 id="examples">Examples</h2>
Software frameworks typically contain considerable housekeeping and utility code in order to help bootstrap user applications, but generally focus on specific problem domains, such as:

<ul><li>Artistic drawing, music composition, and mechanical <a href="/facts/Computer-aided_design/5gSXrmmN">CAD</a><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:3" href="#fn:3">3</a><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:4" href="#fn:4">4</a></li>
<li>Financial modeling applications<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:5" href="#fn:5">5</a></li>
<li>Earth system modeling applications<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:6" href="#fn:6">6</a></li>
<li>Decision support systems<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:7" href="#fn:7">7</a></li>
<li>Media playback and authoring</li>
<li><a href="/facts/Web_framework/8f1CVHDX">Web framework</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Middleware/HobNosz9">Middleware</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Cactus_Framework/fnHGYoc3">Cactus Framework</a> – High performance scientific computing.</li>
<li><a href="/facts/Application_framework/xSzKMgdn">Application framework</a> – General GUI applications.</li>
<li><a href="/facts/Enterprise_Architecture_framework/kq1FCjjT">Enterprise Architecture framework</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Oracle_Application_Development_Framework/7mqcPJfC">Oracle Application Development Framework</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Laravel/nc3vYq0J">Laravel</a> (PHP Framework)</li>
<li><a href="/facts/Malware/5ee7TLFR">Malware</a>, for example <a href="/facts/Pipedream_(toolkit)/en93tdzW">Pipedream</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Php4delphi/pVa6whQP">Php4delphi</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/OpenSilver/hMvfMFru">OpenSilver</a> - enables legacy applications based on Microsoft <a href="/facts/Microsoft_Silverlight/SYKe8yL1">Silverlight</a>, <a href="/facts/Windows_Presentation_Foundation/KTs9FcFn">WPF</a>, and <a href="/facts/LightSwitch/omNe6Lej">LightSwitch</a> to be ported into <a href="/facts/WebAssembly/7ukwnxY9">WebAssembly</a> applications.</li></ul>
<h2 id="architecture">Architecture</h2>
According to Pree,<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:8" href="#fn:8">8</a> software frameworks consist of frozen spots and hot spots. Frozen spots define the overall architecture of a software system, that is to say its basic components and the relationships between them. These remain unchanged (frozen) in any instantiation of the application framework. Hot spots represent those parts where the programmers using the framework add their own code to add the functionality specific to their own project.
In an <a href="/facts/Object-oriented_programming/TxNMEcao">object-oriented</a> environment, a framework consists of <a href="/facts/Abstract_class/0XDoDYmf">abstract</a> and <a href="/facts/Class_(computer_science)/zvzkSAtE">concrete</a> <a href="/facts/Class_(computer_science)/zvzkSAtE">classes</a>. <a href="/facts/Instance_(computer_science)/5zPBGdX1">Instantiation</a> of such a framework consists of <a href="/facts/Object_composition/zWbRC9Jd">composing</a> and <a href="/facts/Subclass_(computer_science)/a7R1xv8n">subclassing</a> the existing classes.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:9" href="#fn:9">9</a>
The necessary functionality can be implemented by using the <a href="/facts/Template_method_pattern/Wr2X8nLc">Template Method Pattern</a> in which the frozen spots are known as invariant methods and the hot spots are known as variant or hook methods. The invariant methods in the superclass provide default behaviour while the hook methods in each subclass provide custom behaviour.
When developing a concrete software system with a software framework, developers utilize the hot spots according to the specific needs and requirements of the system. Software frameworks rely on the <a href="/facts/Hollywood_Principle/CYWDbFlM">Hollywood Principle</a>: "Don't call us, we'll call you."<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:10" href="#fn:10">10</a><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:11" href="#fn:11">11</a> This means that the user-defined classes (for example, new subclasses) receive messages from the predefined framework classes. Developers usually handle this by implementing <a href="/facts/Superclass_(computer_science)/a7R1xv8n">superclass</a> <a href="/facts/Abstract_method/8kAXxVYs">abstract methods</a>.

<h2 id="see-also">See also</h2>
<ul><li><a href="/facts/Class_(computer_programming)/zvzkSAtE">Class (computer programming)</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Software_design_pattern/mV7r4egw">Software design pattern</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Don%27t_repeat_yourself/pUF8abIM">Don't repeat yourself</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Implicit_invocation/01N7lVzY">Implicit invocation</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Software_engine/QhIAMMBg">Software engine</a></li></ul>

<h2 id="external-links">External links</h2>
<ul><li> The dictionary definition of software framework at Wiktionary</li>
<li> Media related to Software frameworks at Wikimedia Commons</li></ul>

<h2 id="references">References</h2>

<ol>
<li id="fn:1">Riehle, Dirk (2000), Framework Design: A Role Modeling Approach (PDF), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology <a href="http://www.riehle.org/computer-science/research/dissertation/diss-a4.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.riehle.org/computer-science/research/dissertation/diss-a4.pdf</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:2">"Framework". DocForge. Archived from the original on 7 October 2018. Retrieved 15 December 2008. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181007003315/http://www.docforge.com/wiki/Framework" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20181007003315/http://www.docforge.com/wiki/Framework</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:3">Vlissides, J M; Linton, M A (1990), "Unidraw: a framework for building domain-specific graphical editors", ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 8 (3): 237–268, doi:10.1145/98188.98197, S2CID 11248368 <a href="/wiki/Doi_(identifier)" target="_blank">/wiki/Doi_(identifier)</a> <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:4">Johnson, R E (1992), "Documenting frameworks using patterns", Conference proceedings on Object-oriented programming systems, languages, and applications - OOPSLA '92, ACM Press, pp. 63–76, doi:10.1145/141936.141943, ISBN 0201533723, S2CID 604969 <a href="0201533723" target="_blank">0201533723</a> <a href="#fnref:4" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:5">Birrer, A; Eggenschwiler, T (1993), "Proceedings of the European conference on object-oriented programming", Frameworks in the financial engineering domain: an experience report, Springer-Verlag, pp. 21–35 <a href="/wiki/Springer-Verlag" target="_blank">/wiki/Springer-Verlag</a> <a href="#fnref:5" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:6">Hill, C; DeLuca, C; Balaji, V; Suarez, M; da Silva, A (2004), "Architecture of the Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF)", Computing in Science and Engineering, 6: 18–28, doi:10.1109/MCISE.2004.1255817, S2CID 9311752 <a href="/wiki/ESMF" target="_blank">/wiki/ESMF</a> <a href="#fnref:6" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:7">Gachet, A (2003), "Software Frameworks for Developing Decision Support Systems – A New Component in the Classification of DSS Development Tools", Journal of Decision Systems, 12 (3): 271–281, doi:10.3166/jds.12.271-280, S2CID 29690836 <a href="/wiki/Doi_(identifier)" target="_blank">/wiki/Doi_(identifier)</a> <a href="#fnref:7" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:8">Pree, W (1994), "Meta Patterns: A Means for Capturing the Essentials of Reusable Object-Oriented Design", Proceedings of the 8th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 821, Springer-Verlag: 150–162, CiteSeerX 10.1.1.74.7935, doi:10.1007/BFb0052181, ISBN 978-3-540-58202-1 <a href="978-3-540-58202-1" target="_blank">978-3-540-58202-1</a> <a href="#fnref:8" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:9">Buschmann, F (1996), Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture Volume 1: A System of Patterns. Chichester, Wiley, ISBN 978-0-471-95869-7 <a href="978-0-471-95869-7" target="_blank">978-0-471-95869-7</a> <a href="#fnref:9" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:10">Larman, C (2001), Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and the Unified Process (2nd ed.), Prentice Hall, ISBN 978-0-13-092569-5 <a href="978-0-13-092569-5" target="_blank">978-0-13-092569-5</a> <a href="#fnref:10" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:11">Gamma, Erich; Helm, Richard; Johnson, Ralph; Vlissides, John (1994). Design Patterns. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-63361-2. <a href="0-201-63361-2" target="_blank">0-201-63361-2</a> <a href="#fnref:11" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
</ol>

Software framework open-in-new

Software framework