What is FrameKit
FrameKit is a software platform dedicated to the prototyping and quick implementation of CASE environments. FrameKit is valuable to quickly implement a CASE environment, either for evaluation purposes or as a final product, especially if graphical representations are involved. It is a small generic CASE environment that can be filled with specific information enabling to customize it in discrete ways. FrameKit emphazizes the following aspects:
- A generic graphical user interface is able to be quickly adapted to a new graphical representation;
- A system platform manages users and proposes services offered by tools to end-users;
- The dynamic integration of software components is achieved without recompilation of the environment by means of configuration files;
- Enhanced API's for discrete languages is provided for Ada, C and Unix shell.
In order to ease both learning and use of an environment, we have paid a particular attention to the look and feel in FrameKit. To meet this point, FrameKit provides a generic user interface: Macao. This user interface fulfills two major needs :
- graphical model editing, according to the rules of the corresponding formalism,
- service display and invocation.
Both FrameKit and Macao relie on three key notions:
- Formalisms define the rules a graphical representation has to respect (what nodes, what edges, how they look...);
- Models are expressed using a formalism (a model can be seen as an instanciation of a formalism);
- Services dedicated to formalisms. They corresponds to some tool functions that perform operations on models (like the computation of some property, verification of the model...).
What de we do with FrameKit
FrameKit is used internally for a fast implementation of CASE environment within the context of our research work. CPN-AMI 2.x and CPN-AMI 3.x , a Petri Net based CASE environment for the modelling and evaluation of distributed systems is built on top of FrameKit.
FrameKit is also used for teaching middleware and software engineering in a master program (DESS Génie des Logiciels Applicatifs) of our university from 1996 to 2004. Then, from 2005 to 2008, FrameKit is used for the engineering project ISR (Ingéniérie des Systèmes Répartis) in the Master SAR (Systèmes et Applications Répartis) of our University.
FrameKit have been designed by Fabrice Kordon since 1994, extention to cope with web services was added by Silien Hong in 2008. A previous version of this integration platform, called AMI, was elaborated by Jean-Marc Bernard (1988-91).
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