What is a programming framework?

Want to develop software? You need a programming framework. To know more about the programming framework and its types, read this article till the end.

Frameworks decide the technique used by modules to communicate with each other to execute the developed application software. If the framework is robust, versatile, and efficient, developed software will be robust, versatile, and experienced.

Software development is a multi-task process it includes coding, designing, and testing. Therefore, different techniques need to be considered to develop efficient software, such as proper syntax, appropriate declaration of variables, memory allocation and de-allocation techniques, exception handling techniques, and other programming constructs.

Software framework decides the software development life cycle. A well-developed software framework decides the level of security be achieved. A software framework restricts accidental changes that can happen during the software development process.

Software frameworks remove duplicate code from the software. There exists many frameworks and many of which are open-source. Selecting a framework to develop software depends on the type of software to be developed and the functionalities required in the desired software. 

The software framework decides the techniques used to test the developed software and how to remove errors. Therefore, the use of a well-established and tested framework reduces the software development time.

A programming framework contains several different libraries used to develop application software. Programs of software call appropriate libraries to accomplish the desired task. 

There exist different types of frameworks. Frameworks are categorized according to their application area. For example, a framework for developing a web-based application is different, and the framework for developing a data science application is different. Likewise, a framework for developing a database management application is different from developing a mobile application.

Programming Framework

A programming framework provides an established communication pattern to build the desired software. A programming framework also decides the software deployment techniques. A programming framework includes different types of libraries, toolsets, application programming interfaces (APIs) and compilers. These programming framework components are used to develop desired software. 

A framework decides the communication pattern between different programs in the developed software. Abstract methods decide the communication pattern. The framework can also be extended as per the requirement.

Framework decides the amount of memory to be consumed by the developed software. Therefore, using a well-established framework reduces the software development time as it is not required to learn the framework. Furthermore, the use of a well-established framework lays the foundation for future projects.

An object-oriented framework contains abstract class and concrete class. Since the framework is based on object-oriented programming, it supports composing and sub-classing. 

Application Software Framework

Application software decides the overall structure of the software to be developed. For example, all applications having a graphical user interface has a standard structure to develop software. Normally Object-Oriented programming techniques are used to develop software.

There exist many free and open-source software development frameworks. Example of these framework includes NetBeans, Eclipse projects, KDE, GNOME, etc. In addition, a framework is also available supported by Microsoft. Microsoft supported framework includes Microsoft Foundation Class Library. Other frameworks include .NET Framework.

To develop a cross-platform application framework such as Qt, widget toolkits, Fox Toolkit etc., are used.

Java supports the Oracle Application Development Framework to develop Java-based application software.

Framework for Web-Based Applications

Framework for web-based applications includes web services, web resources, and web APIs. Web frameworks are used to develop applications that will run on World Wide Web. In addition, web frameworks provide techniques used in the development of web-based applications.

The Web frameworks have libraries that can access databases, maintain sessions, and promote reusability. 

There exist many “full-stack” frameworks that are used for web development. This framework includes ASP.NET, Java, WebObjects, Ruby on Rails, Django, and Symfony.

There exist different types of framework architectures; these include – Model-view-controller (MVC) and Three-tier architecture.

The Model-view-controller has a data model, business rules and user interface. The MVC pattern draws a line between the data model and the user interface. The MVC is a module-based development that supports code reusability and multiple interfaces. In addition, the MVC framework can develop web pages and web services.

Example of MVC framework includes Ruby on Rails, Django, Spring MVC, Sails.js etc. 

Three-tier architecture is another architecture used to develop web-based applications. Applications based on three-tier architecture has three components – client, application and database. In the three-tier architecture, the database used is Relational Database Management System. The application part of the three-tier architecture contains business logic. The business logic gets executed on the server and is responsible for making communicating with the client. The client is responsible for rendering HTML tags on the client machine. 

In a web-based application, HTML tags are rendered on the client machine; the web page must be refreshed if any changes are made. It is possible to partially refresh the web page as per the requirement using Javascript. In web-page in which extensive Javascript is used is called a single-page application. 

Server-side Web-based framework  

Server-side web-based frameworks include – Apache Wicket, ASP.NET Core, CakePHP, Django, Flask, Ruby on Rails, Symfony, Zend Framework.

Client-Side Framework

Client-side frameworks include AngularJS, Angular, ReactJS, and Vue.JS.

The object-Oriented framework has the capability of mapping defined objects to tuples. On the other hand, the Java-based framework such as Hibernate creates a database at runtime.

There also exists a framework that is capable of interpreting URLs. For example, frameworks such as Drupal and Django use a regular expression to match provided URL.

Ajax framework is used to create web applications. Ajax is capable of partial page refreshment. Ajax frameworks such as jQuery are used web-based applications responsible for executing partial page refreshment. 

There exists a framework that is responsible for creating web services. For example, the web 2.0 RESTful framework is responsible for creating applications that use resources similar to Semantic Web ontology.

ASP.NET Core   

ASP.NET Core is a framework that is free and Open-Source. It is a framework that Microsoft developed. ASP.Net Core applications can be executed on the .NET framework and cross-platform. NET. 

The ASP.NET core application is capable of uniting the applications developed on ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web API.

The ASP.NET Core is a modular framework optimized for cloud computing and develops lightweight applications to handle HTTP requests.

ASP.NET CORE is an open-source framework.