A Feature Model of Framework Applications

Learning how to use application frameworks effectively becomes important in their widespread use in software development. Learning frameworks is often difficult because of lack of their documentation and their complexity. In order to help framework learning, we propose a behavioral model, called feature component model, which abstracts internal behaviors of framework applications in terms of their behavioral characteristics such as inversion of controls. We apply our behavioral model to an example misuse of a practical framework developed by a third party in order to show its practical usefulness.

I. Introduction

Learning how to use application frameworks effectively becomes important because of their widespread use in software development. Many framework products are deployed without proper documentation about their correct use. Therefore their users, application developers, must often learn their correct use from the program code of example applications [1].