SOFTWARE FRAMEWORKS – AN OVERVIEW
PROGRAMMING APPLICATIONS AND FRAMEWORKS (IT3030)
CONTENTS
Preliminaries
Programming vs Software Engineering
Generic functionalities in Software Development
Frameworks: what are they?
How does Frameworks help with the Software Engineering
Approach?
Framework vs. Libraries
Why use frameworks?
Advantages of using frameworks
PRELIMINARIES
What is this course?
PAF (IT3030) introduces the fundamentals of full stack web development with
an emphasis on application of good software engineering practices and Industry
standards.
Learning Outcomes of this course?
After completing this module, you will,
Know the basics of Software Frameworks
Apply Industry standard software development best practices
Understand the REST architectural style
Develop Java based REST web services (Back-end)
Develop JavaScript based Interactive web applications (Front-end)
Module Outline
PROGRAMMING VS SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
What is Programming?
Programming simply means writing Code to create an application.
What is Software Engineering?
Software engineering is the end-to-end process of applying good engineering
principles and software development practices to produce quality software.
Programming vs Software Engineering
Software Engineering is NOT just coding. Coding is just one part of a large
process.
Q: What other practices come under software engineering?
PROGRAMMING VS SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
What other practices come under software engineering?
Analyzing user requirements and designing the software to meet those
requirements.
Communicating with all the stakeholders to resolve issues and update them on the
progress.
Choosing the software architectures, patterns, algorithms, coding techniques,
technologies used to realize the software design based on sound design
considerations.
Quality Assurance (QA) of the developed software to ensure that the software
meets the client requirements and acceptable reliability, performance and security
considerations.
Deploying/ releasing the software for actual use.
Maintaining the developed software as needed after release/ deployment.
GENERIC FUNCTIONALITIES IN SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
Generic functionalities in software development
Most (web) applications have a lot of features in common.
E.g.: User Authentication, routing, database connectivity,
scheduled jobs etc.
There is little point in rewriting all the functionalities (including the
common ones) from scratch every time new software is developed.
What if the generic functionalities can be collected and made
reusable?
FRAMEWORKS:
A framework is anWHAT ARE
integrated setTHEY?
of software artifacts (such as classes,
objects, and components) that collaborate to provide a reusable
architecture for a family of related applications [1].
A framework enables a coding environment that contains low-level
libraries to address conventional coding issues. The objective of a
framework is to deliver faster development of an application. This includes
everything we need to build large-scale applications, such as templates
based on best practices [4].
A framework is a foundation for developing software applications. Software
engineers and developers use a framework as a template to create
websites and applications. Developers do this by adding code to a
framework, then personalizing it for their specific purpose [5].
A software framework is an abstraction in which software, providing
generic functionality, can be selectively changed (extended) by
additional user-written code, thus providing application-specific software
HOW DO FRAMEWORKS HELP WITH THE SOFTWARE
ENGINEERING APPROACH?
How do Frameworks help with the Software Engineering Approach?
Architectural Patterns (e.g.: MVC, MVVM)
Design Patterns
Inversion of Control
Standards/ Best Practices (Naming conventions, Coding standards,
Directory structures etc.)
Tooling Support (Package managers, Dependency managers,
Boilerplate code generation)
Testing Support
FRAMEWORK VS. LIBRARIES
Certain features make a framework different from other library
forms, including the following [7]:
Default Behavior: Before customization, a framework behaves in
a manner specific to the user’s action.
Inversion of Control: Unlike other libraries, the global flow of
control within a framework is employed by the framework rather
than the caller.
Extensibility: A user can extend the framework by selectively
replacing default code with user code.
Non-modifiable Framework Code: A user can extend the
framework, but not modify the code.
WHY USE FRAMEWORKS?
The designers of software frameworks aim to facilitate software
developments by allowing designers and programmers to devote
their time to meeting software requirements rather than
dealing with the more standard low-level details of
providing a working system, thereby reducing overall
development time [6].
The aim of frameworks is to provide a common structure so that
developers don’t have to redo it from scratch and can reuse the
code provided. In this way, frameworks allow us to cut out much of
the work and save a lot of time.
To summarize: there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.
ADVANTAGES OF USING FRAMEWORKS
Improved coding, easy code reusability and ease of debugging code compared
with from-scratch developments.
Community support.
Accelerated development (if the programmer is familiar with the framework).
Often provides caching and optimized processes for resource intensive tasks.
Enables faster methods for development with less code (boilerplate code etc.).
Better compliance to accepted security standards.
LIMITATIONS OF USING FRAMEWORKS
Learning the Framework and not the programming language prevent
programmers from gaining an in-depth understanding of the
programming language.
Users of a framework are forced to respect the limitations and
conventions imposed by its design.
Options to tweak functionalities are limited.
A framework will come with everything required to satisfy a wide
range of use cases, not all these features will be used for a given
project.
The right framework for the application should be chosen, or else
performance and user experience may be impacted negatively.
We must be up-to-date with new/deprecated features in every
SOME EXAMPLES
Spring/ Spring Boot (Java)
Express.js (with Node.js)
Laravel (PHP)
.NET/ .NET Core (C# etc.)
Django (Python)
Angular (Typescript)
Vue.js (JavaScript)
SUMMARY
Programming vs Software Engineering
Generic functionalities in Software Development
Frameworks: what are they?
How do Frameworks help with the Software Engineering
Approach?
Framework vs. Libraries
Why use frameworks?
Advantages and limitations of using frameworks
Some examples
REFERENCES
1. Software Engineer vs. Programmer: What's the Difference?
2. Frameworks: Why They Are Important and How to Apply Them Effec
tively
3. What is a Web Framework, and Why Should I use one?
4. The Difference Between a Framework and a Library
5. What Is a Framework? (Definition and Types of Frameworks)
6. Software framework
7. Techopedia Explains Software Framework
THANK YOU
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