Design, implementation and evolution of object oriented frameworks: concepts and guidelines

Object‐oriented frameworks provide software developers with the means to build an infrastructure for their applications. Unfortunately, frameworks do not always deliver on their promises of reusability and flexibility. To address this, we have developed a conceptual model for frameworks and a set of guidelines to build object oriented frameworks that adhere to this model. Our guidelines focus on improving the flexibility, reusability and usability (i.e. making it easy to use a framework) of frameworks.