Building Application Frameworks : Object-Oriented Foundations of Framework Design

Author: Mohamed E. Fayad, Douglas C. Schmidt, Ralph E. Johnson List Price: $82.50 Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price ISBN: 0471248754 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons (13 September, 1999) Edition: Hardcover Sales Rank: 96,970 Average Customer Rating: 4.45 out of 5

Buy now directly from Amazon.com -

Customer Reviews

First of all, the book is more of an academic book. I have no problem with this as the Design Patterns book produced by the GoF was written in the same manner, but the language and tone could have more informal to make it a more enjoyable read for the working architect rather than the university student.

That not really being the real issue, there are many chapters in this book that are almost useless to read. I understand this book shouldn't be read from cover-to-cover (seeing as the chapters have hardly any real order to them - another bad point), but reading about a smalltalk framework for something so trivial and talking about it's significance for a hundred pages or so doesn't make me learn anything - simular to the Mythical Man Month. I'm sure these kinds of chapters or books even are an important, integral part of computer science and should be captured, but this isn't the book I'm afraid.

The chapters on example frameworks, although helpful, didn't tell the reader a lot of inforamtion. For instance, the Hypermedia framework was written as it was being told with an overview. Although the patterns and some driving design decisions were made, the actual purpose of the framework was unclear until the end of the chapter that I put in the missing pieces myself. The author wrote it like a review or an abstract to a larger case study - which doesn't help those that truly want to understand what's going on.

The chapters on formalizing and understanding frameworks, although I appreiciate the academic effort to describing frameworks, were useless reads as well. As an architect that has built many frameworks and continues to do so, their so-called "simplified model" couldn't even potentially describe half the frameworks i've built. For a book that is supposed to be the "definitive guide/reference" on frameworks, it most surely doesn't meet to the level of frameworks being produced in the enterprise today. Perhaps volumes 2 and 3 can clear this up.

Given all this, however, the book has some good chapters, albeit reviews and abstracts of white papers and other books. If you really want to start building frameworks, maybe this would be a good start, but I'd recommend Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Software, Refactoring, EJB Design Patterns and many other books about advanced OO and designing software that focus on the "smaller" elements of producing frameworks instead. If you truely understand these works, learning how to build frameworks is almost trivial and you won't really need to read this book. Maybe I'm just smart too, I dunno - you decide.

Just my thoughts - hope that helps someone's buying decision.

Volume 1, "Building Application Frameworks", addresses several problematic topics crucial to the success of object-oriented application frameworks. It presents a complete reference on how to develop a good application framework and provides guidelines for dealing with issues related to application frameworks.

Volume 2, "Implementing Application Frameworks", illustrates the development and use of frameworks technology in several domains, such as business, artificial intelligence, agents, tools, environments, and system applications. It describes diverse application frameworks and discusses real-world experience.

Volume 3, "Domain-Specific Application Frameworks", provides valuable insight into successful application framework examples. All the material is presented in a practical, easy-to-understand manner.

I strongly recommend this three-volume reference for anybody planning to use the hottest technologies related to software reuse, frameworks, in the software development process.

Similar Products