Boranbayev A.S.

Eurasian National University named after L.N. Gumilyov, Astana, Kazakhstan

ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES FOR DEVELOPING INFORMATION SYSTEMS USING FRAMEWORKS

Today, programmers are using many different open source frameworks which help them with development of Information Systems using J2EE programming [1]. Some examples of these frameworks include Spring, Hibernate, Struts, and many other [2]. Many of these open source frameworks do not make programmer's life any better, because it is not always easy to change and improve these frameworks. For these reasons sometimes programmers might need to build their own framework. Developing a framework that leverages Struts could be a very difficult task, but programmers still do it and many of them succeed [3]. In this article, I will discuss some questions to ask yourself before writing your own framework.

There are a many reasons not to use a community framework in development of Information Systems. A general framework simply cannot be the optimal solution for every use case. However, we need to think carefully before writing our own framework for a production application. Did you ever think if you should build rather than buy your next house? It isn't a trivial choice.

It is tempting to set large goals and develop a cutting edge framework that helps us to solve all problems. If we have sufficient resources, that could be done. Starting smaller lowers the unforeseen risks, takes up less development time, and lowers the learning curve.

Here are the questions we should answer before writing our own custom framework:

1. Can I write a better specific solution than the community solution? The majority of developers don't have the skills required to do this, even though they are focusing on a specific problem set.

2. Am I sure that I fully understand the problem domain? It is possible that the community framework has flexibility we don't require for our use case. It is more likely that it simply has flexibility that we don't realize we will require, because we have less experience in designing applications than the sum of all of the community developers, who have helped to create the community framework.

3. Do we understand exactly how the current community frameworks work, why they work like that way, which design patterns we can safely remove, or which patterns we can add? To create our own framework without playing with current community frameworks is hard. We may not need everything the community frameworks offer and some of their generalized patterns may not be optimal for our problem task, but we cannot even start to write a better framework for our use case unless you have ripped apart the code base for the community frameworks, and really understand exactly how they work and why we would want to do things differently.

4. Is it worth the time to develop our own framework? It takes a lot of time to write a solid framework. And then we need to create documentation that is as good as that for the community projects. Did you ever think if it would be better using that development time to help community frameworks to become better? Maybe we could extend the community frameworks for our own use, or even submit code for possible inclusion into the frameworks.

5. If we develop our own framework, is it worth the learning curve for others to learn it? Not only we, but everyone else who has to work with our new framework is going to have to learn it whereas many of these people may already be familiar with community frameworks. Every time we hire a new contractor or developer we are going to have to teach them our new framework. Is it worth the time?

Every web application uses a framework for developing Information Systems [4]. The questions are whether developers wrote it themselves or leveraged an existing framework, and whether it is a good one or a poor one. There are a lot of reasons to use a good community framework, but there is nothing wrong with writing our own. Custom written frameworks get a lot of grief because a lot of custom frameworks are not good. This does not mean there is no reason to write your own framework. There are many examples of successfully written custom frameworks. But developers must remember, writing your own custom framework is way harder than they would expect.

I would like to mention that it is also a good idea to write our own framework as a learning exercise. In fact, for anyone who has the time, I do not think anything could make you a better programmer than creating a custom framework. As a learning exercise it is a great way to gain experience and to understand what you are doing while building Information Systems.

References:

1. Boranbayev A.S. Development of E-business websites using a multi-tiered architecture and J2EE. Materials of 6-th Kazakh-Russian international scientific-practical conference called “Mathematical modeling of scientific-technological and ecological problems in oil/gas mining industries”. – Astana, 2007, p. 87 – 91.

2. Software framework. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_framework

3. Struts, an open-source MVC implementation. Manage complexity in large Web sites with this servlets and JSP framework:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/j-struts/

4. Boranbayev A.S. Principles for Developing Architecture and Design of Web Applications and Interface in Information System. //Vestnik of National Academy of Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan, 2007, № 6, p.130 – 134.