framework

A group of co-operating classes which enable a design to be re-used for a given category of problem. The framework guides the architecture of the application by breaking it up into abstract classes, each of which have different responsibilities and collaborate in a predefined way.

The application developer creates a specialized framework by:

- defining new classes which inherit from these abstract classes

- composing framework class instances

- implementing the services required by the framework.

In C++, he implements application behavior in the virtual functions redefined in these derived classes. This is known as overriding.

See Also

data framework