The Design And Implementation Of A Frame-Oriented Development Tool

In this paper we summarize the common methodologies of solving the predicament that commonly exists in the development of enterprise application software, and present a model of frame-oriented assistant development tool (called FOAD) according to the frame-oriented theory. The frame-oriented theory is described at first, and the design objective of FOAD is given. The complete structure of the frames is formed based on this objective. While the major composition modules are introduced, the metadata management modules are described and the functions of different layers of metadata are illustrated. This paper also describes the access modules of the multi-data database and details the internal structure frames to illuminate how the frame is programmed once, but could be accessed by multiple type of databases. With the description of the Form Designer and Form Builder's structures, users can review the whole process of forming the application system via frames. Finally, FOAD is compared with other similar development tools on the aspects of adoption range, advantages and disadvantages. Based on the above, the prospects of the development of frame-oriented tools are discussed.