Task-driven Specialization Support for Object-oriented Frameworks

A framework is a collection of classes implementing the shared architecture of a family of applications. It is shown how the extension points ("hot spots") of a framework can be specified formally in such a way that the specification can be used to automatically generate a task-based wizard for guiding the framework specialization process. The extension points are specified as parameterized patterns, which define various constraints over the parameters. The tool (FRED) allows the application developer to bind actual system elements to the pattern parameters or generate default code as instructed in the pattern specification. The tool keeps track of the broken constraints and generates necessary programming tasks to remedy them. We argue that this kind of tool support could be the core of a programming environment for architecture-oriented programming, guaranteeing that the static requirements of the architecture are satisfied. In this sense the parameterized pattern concept represents an architecture-level (static) typing system, and the tool is a structure-oriented editor that both guides the user and checks that the application conforms to the given architecture. The tool has been implemented in Java for Java, and it has been evaluated against a real industrial framework. We will explain the underlying concepts of FRED and the main characteristics of the tool, demonstrate the approach with a simple example, and summarize our experiences with the approach so far.