A three-view model for developing object-oriented frameworks

Abstract

This paper describes a three-view model for developing object-oriented frameworks. We propose a new methodology based on this model, and demonstrate its effectiveness using an example of practical industrial applications. This model can lead software engineers to a framework that has high reliability, portability, and maintainability. These quality factors of applications are especially important in a domain that has repeatability and changeability of hardware and software environment. The three-view model consists of a domain analysis view, a layer view, and a mechanism view. The domain analysis view is used to clarify all information and domain knowledge by using a new concept that we call Domain Reference Models (DRM), which reference models for modeling domain-specific objects, so that a framework has high reusability. The layer view is used to divide a framework into three layers that are piled up vertically: an infrastructure layer, a generic layer, and a domain layer. Because software engineers can replace a part of the framework for restriction on implementation, the framework has high portability. The mechanism view is used to decide which mechanism of whitebox frameworks or blackbox frameworks. By using this guideline, the framework has high maintainability. We applied our approach to the framework development for an industrial monitoring applications. By developing a prototype, we have a prospect of withdrawing the development costs of the framework by five or six times of application deployment. In this application, we estimate several ten times of application deployment. Therefore, it is effective for software engineers to develop a framework based on the three-view model.