Customizing Environment for Domain Framework

Framework has considered a promising way to improve productivity by reusing the software architecture, not just one part. Framework can be defined as a well-defined template for working programs and it can be called an application generator, since it consists of wired-in interactions among well-defined classes. This was the reason why we had developed PDM (Product Data Management) framework for small and medium-sized companies in Korea. It is possible for application developers to generate new applications by customizing our NextPDM framework. Framework might reduce the time and efforts to develop new PDM application. However, it doesn't mean that framework doesn't require any efforts for reuse. Since our framework has so many classes, it is not easy to identify what components to be refined to meet new requirements. For convenient and easy reuse, our clients required a framework reuse environment. In this research, a framework-customizing toolkit has been constructed. It helps the process of framework reuse to be systematic by supporting the following: (1) understanding the framework itself, (2) refining the components, (3) changing the related components automatically, and (4) configuring the application.