Rating: 
Summary: An important three volume set on an important subject!
Review: Object-oriented frameworks, reusable semi-finished software architectures, have made documented improvements on both software quality and reuseability. This three-volume set of books is an absolute neccessity for those who want to be at the cutting-edge of successfull software development.
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Summary: The definitive reference for frameworks
Review: The object-oriented framework approach promises to dramatically reduce the cost of building new OO applications. But building a framework that can serve as the underlying skeleton for a group of applications is a demanding task; and once a framework has been built, generating a new application by specializing it appropriately, also requires considerable expertise. This three-volume collection edited by Fayad, Johnson, and Schmidt fills a long-standing gap in the OO literature by covering all aspects of frameworks. This first volume lays the foundation for the framework approach. The first two parts of this volume provide an overview and general perspective of the framework approach. Next, it goes into the details of framework design and development, before moving on to testing, integration, and documentation. The final part of the book focuses on management issues and economic considerations. Each part consists of a number of chapters written by leading experts in the relevant topics. This volume provides complete coverage of the foundations of the framework approach. Extremely useful for both academics and practitioners. The numerous problems and suggestions for projects at the end of each chapter also makes it very suitable as a text for advanced students.
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Summary: Money well invested
Review: The ``Application Framework'' series (building, implementing, and domain-specific applications) are truly excellent experienced-based guide on building and implementing object-oriented (OO) frameworks. Each book in the series is a gold mine; excellent examples of successful implementation at corporations from all around the world are provided. The examples practically walk one thru all steps of developing and implementing a framework. The series provides numerous invaluable technical as well as managerial tips. This is a very unique practical series and most essential for those who want to be successful in enterprise software development in 21st century. The authors/editors are well-known experts in the OO arena and that sure adds to the credibility and value of the series. I'd recommend all three books to practitioners and consultants. It is a money well invested. I also recommended the first book for a graduate course in object-oriented development. ~
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Summary: Integrates/teaches concepts around framework development
Review: This book fills a gap in the software engineering literature for some theory, sound practices and experiences in framework development; supported by case-studies. It provides both academic and industrial-strength perspectives and weaves a unified picture of the concepts (patterns, architecures) and constructs (domain models, semantic generalization, components) sorrounding object-oriented framework development. A systematic unfoldment of experiences and perspectives is given which provide insight into building reusable software structures using patterns, deliberate architectures and application frameworks. It does so from the view point of a significant number of framework builders and academics. This book can be used both as a text book and a manual of reuse within software organizations who have so far been daunted by the issues of creating application frameworks and reusable design and code. The case-study-rich approach augments the systematic steps proposed for framework development. The book evolves the art of framework development into a more engineered/repeatable discipline of reuse.
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Summary: Excellent books to learn how to develop OOA Frameworks
Review: This book in conjunction with the books "Domain-Specific Application Frameworks: Frameworks Experience by Industry" and "Implementing Application Frameworks: Object-Oriented Frameworks at Work" are a series of three books that constitute a complete and necessary guide for the design and implementation of application frameworks. They are based on multiple academic and industrial contributors experience building a wide range of domain-specific application framework. These books are very easy to read and understand and you can learn from them not only what a framework and an application framework are, but also how to apply this technology to real world domains, like manufacturing, health care, distributed computing, real-time systems, simulation environments, ... First book, "Building Application Frameworks: Object-Oriented Foundations of Framework Design" introduces application frameworks, their benefits and problems. It addresses all the fundamental concepts behind OO application frameworks and provides guidelines for OO application framework development. It is organized in eight parts. Part one provides a complete overview of OO application framework technology describing what is an application framework, what are the problems and benefits of application frameworks and how to use, develop and evaluate an application framework. Part Two presents some historical application frameworks and discusses some general guidelines to increase the reusability of application frameworks. Part Three describes how to build a framework analysing a concrete domain. The rest of the book provides all the necessary information to completely build an application framework. It presents all the concepts managed in framework development, which are the different development approaches, how to test the resulting frameworks, the problems derived from integration and a question sometimes forgotten but very important, the framework documentation. Second book, "Domain-Specific Application Frameworks: Frameworks Experience by Industry" is focused in the experience of industrial and academic contributors in the development of OO application framework in different domains. Each chapter covers step by step the complete development of an application framework in manufacturing, distributed systems, real-time systems, telecommunication, multimedia, chemistry and data visualization domains. It includes the motivation developers founded to choose application framework technology, the problems they had to solve and the final solutions they developed. Third book, "Implementing Application Frameworks: Object-Oriented Frameworks at Work", shows step by step how to implement application frameworks in different domains. It is organized in six parts covering examples about i) Business Frameworks with different examples in sales and administrative domains, ii) Artificial Intelligence, iii) Agent Application Frameworks, presenting interesting frameworks for speech recognition, neural networks and agents. iv) Specialized tool frameworks, v) Language Specific Frameworks, vi) System Application Frameworks, which present and analyse the application of OO frameworks in combination with other methodologies as component-oriented programming, language constructs or constraint programming and vi) Experiences in Application Frameworks. This last section is very useful because analyse the lessons learned using the application framework technology.
Rating:
Summary: An outstanding book in building OO application frameworks
Review: This book provides you the solid foundation of building OO application frameworks in covering the concepts of software frameworks, understanding of software frameworks from the top names in the OO design and implementation world, techniques of developing, maintaining, and evaluating frameworks. This is absolutely an essential book in software frameworks.
Rating:
Summary: A valuable addition to any library
Review: This is a very good reference for application frameworks. The book includes both basic concepts, and advanced issues about frameworks: designing, implementing, and documenting them.
The authors give a thorough analysis of frameworks, and provide a clarifying discussion of some issues that are not tackled as explicitly in the literature. For example, they provide a detailed discussion of the relationship between frameworks, and other reuse techniques like components, templates, and patterns, along with a clarification of the way these techniques work together. I found this analysis very fundamental for my research in the filed of software reuse.
Introducing the notion of "hooks" is one of the major achievements of the book. The book discussed hooks as means of capturing knowledge about how to augment the behavior of a framework. The discussion is combined with real-life experience with using hooks.
One of the strengths of the book is the effort done in linking together theoretical concepts and practical experience in designing, documenting and implementing Object-Oriented frameworks. The focus on real-life experience adds to the credibility and understandability of the concepts introduced in the book.
The book puts together all the knowledge and experience about framework design, usability, understandability, documentation, and management in a clear, and well-organized way. I strongly recommend this book for both researchers and engineers. It is a valuable addition to any library.
Rating: 
Summary: Waste of money, waste of time
Review: This is no tutorial or introduction about how to write frameworks. The book is a collection of essays - lots of repetitions, many words, but no help if you want to get a good framework design. Very disappointing! Zu deutsch: Geschwafel!
Rating: 
Summary: Not too bad, but not too great either
Review: This is not reference material on how to build a proper framework. The book could have been a lot thinner if all the repetitions would have been eliminated. It's also sometimes hard to figure out what the authors are getting at exactly. A lot of stuff is simply common sense combined with knowledge of the proper usage of design patterns. They make a lot of fuss about 'hook methods' and 'template methods', even though I can't see what's so special about them. It's nice to have this book since material on frameworks is pretty rare. It would have been nicer though if it wouldn't have been so chaotic and cluttered.
Rating:
Summary: An essential reading for both the business and the research
Review: This three volume set distils the experience of a number of software practitioners, project managers, application engineers, researchers, and academics in dealing with framework-based software development. It offers a comprehensive and accessible treatment of the theory and practice of building and using application frameworks. The three volumes address the needs both of the business and of the research. They suggest practical solutions to recurrent development problems and point out hot research topics. In particular, Volume 1 "Building Application Frameworks" highlights the difficulties and draws the path towards the successful development of effective application frameworks. Each chapter has a final section with review questions and project proposals, which helps teachers and students to better assess the mastery of new concepts. Volume 2 "Implementing Application Frameworks" comprises a number of case studies that exemplify how to develop complex frameworks by exploiting the synergy of advanced techniques and methodologies, such as design patterns, architectural styles, software components, multi-agent systems, and more. Volume 3 "Domain-Specific Application Frameworks" emphasises the best practice in software development and reuse for a variety of application domains. Volumes 2 and 3 include two CD-ROMs with case studies, sample models, framework code, and demos.
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