Editorial: Enterprise frameworks

SOFTWARE—PRACTICE AND EXPERIENCESoftw. Pract. Exper. 2002; 32:735–736 (DOI: 10.1002/spe.455)

Editorial:Enterprise frameworks

Enterprise information systems consist of software tools and applications that process, handle, andcontrol the business, logistic, and production activities of an enterprise. An information system canbe considered as the nerve system of an enterprise. It facilitates the exchange of information amongthe constituent parties of the enterprise: customer offices, business units, departments, productioncells, and distribution centers. It supports the co-operative work of managers, sellers, market analysts,administrative staff, engineers, machine operators, and workers. It allows the automation of a varietyof functions that otherwise would require the direct intervention of the human operators.

Developing an enterprise information system is a complex task: it requires deep domain knowledgein terms of enterprise business models and business processes, consolidated expertise in building largesoftware systems, and continuous awareness of innovative technological solutions. The goal of anobject-oriented enterprise framework (enterprise framework for short) is to reduce complexity andlifecycle costs of enterprise systems, while ensuring flexibility.

An enterprise framework is a software architecture exposing a rich set of semantics and modelingparadigms for developing and extending enterprise applications. An enterprise framework is, by design,the cornerstone of an organization’s systems engineering activities. Enterprise frameworks offer astreamlined and flexible alternative to traditional tools and applications, which feature numerous pointsolutions integrated into complex and often inflexible environments. Enterprise frameworks play animportant role since they allow reuse of design knowledge, and offer techniques for creating referencemodels and scalable architectures for enterprise integration.

These models and architectures are sufficiently flexible and powerful to be used at multiple levels,e.g. from the integration of the supply chain of a multi-national corporation, to the construction of aglobal virtual factory, and down to the monitoring and control system for a single production cell.

These frameworks implement and enforce well-documented standards for component integrationand collaboration. The architecture of an enterprise framework provides for ready integration with newor existing components. It defines how these components must interact with the framework and howobjects collaborate. In addition, it defines how developers work together to build and extend enterpriseapplications based on the framework.

This special issue is designed to help organizations effectively develop or adapt enterprise frameworktechnology in the real world. It focuses both on technical and management aspects.

The articles deal with such issues as the identification of framework design guidelines, the evolutionof an enterprise framework and its correlation with the enterprise life span, new mechanisms andapproaches for the design, development and documentation of enterprise frameworks, and examplesand lessons learned from industrial projects.

Copyright 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

736 EDITORIAL

It consists of seven articles including two reports about research and development projects thatrepresent some of the leading-edge efforts in the field.

Jeong Ah Kim reports on a project for developing a framework in the PDM (Product DataManagement) domain. This report documents the entire framework’s life-cycle from the domainanalysis, to the identification of reusable abstract components and their documentation by means ofdesign patterns, up to the definition of guidelines for the framework customization and reuse.

Itana M. S. Gimenes and Leonor Barroca discuss the process of developing interoperable softwarecomponents from template frameworks in the domain of workflow management systems.

P. Narasimhan, L. E. Moser and P. M. Melliar-Smith present the Eternal framework, a component-based middleware framework that provides transparent fault tolerance for enterprise applications,and that ensures continuous 24 × 7 operation without requiring the special skills of the applicationprogrammers.

James Carey and Brent Carlson discuss the lessons learned becoming a framework developer. Theyemphasize the role of the framework developer as a member of several teams, each one in charge ofdeveloping diverse applications while contributing to the evolution and reuse of a common enterpriseframework.

Hafedh Mili, Mohamed Fayad, David Brugali, David Hamu, and Dov Dori discuss the issues andresearch directions of enterprise frameworks.

Wilhelm Hasselbring and Ralph van den Houdt present on the role-based guide that has beendeveloped for new developers in the California projects. These projects develop financial applicationsbased on the IBM San Francisco enterprise framework.

Marcelo Campo and Andres Dıaz Pace present an approach to architecture-driven design of object-oriented frameworks based on the notion of object-oriented materialization of architectural styles.

Mohamed FayadDepartment of Computer Science and Engineering

University of Nebraska—Lincoln, U.S.A.E-mail: fayad@cse.unl.edu

David HamuLiberty Consulting

Mesa, Arizona, U.S.A.E-mail: dhamu@acm.org

Davide BrugaliFacolta di Ingegneria—Universita di Bergamo

Dalmine, ItalyE-mail: brugali@polito.it

Copyright 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Softw. Pract. Exper. 2002; 32:735–736