Utilizing Application Frameworks: A Domain Engineering Approach

Application frameworks aim to provide coherent code to be used and reused. The primary benefits of application frameworks stem from the modularity, reusability, extensibility, and inversion of control they provide to developers. Yet, as these frameworks become more extensive and complex, their usage becomes a burden and requires further effort. In this chapter we adopt the Application-based DOmain Modeling (ADOM), a domain engineering approach offering guidance and validation for developers when using existing knowledge, as in the case of application frameworks. The approach is adopted in the context of a programming language and demonstrated with the use of Java and is thus denoted as ADOM-JAVA. The approach preserves the regular development environment and requires minimal adaptation for using the proposed approach. We also demonstrate the use of ADOM-JAVA as a vehicle for defining and using domain-specific languages. Finally, we evaluate the use of ADOM when applied to a Java-based development. Following the guidance and validation capabilities provided by the proposed approach, the experiment shows that the productivity of the developers in terms of time and quality is expected to increase.