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General Meeting
Location: Memorial Hall - Burgandy Room
Date: Monday, October 5
Topic: Designing an Object Oriented Application Framework in Delphi
Robert N. Kozak, Design Insight Software Consulting Inc.
RobertKozak@yahoo.com

This session will discuss the issues involved with designing an Application Framework. Topics will include:

  • A Primer in Object Oriented Design
  • A Short Primer on Design Patterns
  • Types of Frameworks
  • Why design an Application Framework?
  • Elements of an Object Oriented Application Framework
  • Demonstration of a working Application Framework
Robert N. Kozak is a Borland Certified Delphi Client/Server Developer and has been developing with Delphi since 1994. Robert has been involved in the Delphi user community in Toronto for a number of years and has delivered sessions at the Borland Developers Conference. Robert has published articles for Delphi Developer and Delphi Informant. Robert just recently started his own consulting firm, Design Insight Software Consulting Inc., which specializes in developing Application Frameworks for clients internationally.
 
Review: Before I get to the review of Robert's presentation I would like to congratulate our very own Wayne Niddery on becoming the newest member of TeamB. Way to go Wayne!!

Robert spent the first half of the meeting discussing the basic concepts of Object-Oriented Programming and Object-Oriented Design. Specifically, Robert focused in on Design Patterns. A Design Pattern is a solution to design problem that can be applied over and over again or a collection of classes and objects that are found to reoccur within similar designs. For more information on Design Patterns, Robert highly recommends this book:

Design Patterns    Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing)

Gamma, Helm, Johnson and Vlissides.

Now that the audience had a good grasp the required building blocks, Robert moved on to the topic of Frameworks. Robert used the following quote to describe Frameworks:

A framework is a set of cooperating classes that make up a reusable design for a specific class of software.
-- Ralph E. Johnson and Brian Foote. Designing Reusable Classes JOOP June/July 1988.

Some frameworks that you might be familliar with are the VCL, MFC and COM. Robert then went on to discuss a few frameworks in more detail and finished up by giving a demonstration of a framework he developed called GlobalPlatform.

Robert did a very good job at presenting a lot of material in one meeting but because of the time constraint he didn't get to cover much of the material in great depth. Perhaps we will get Robert back to do some more advanced talks on Design Patterns and/or Frameworks. Like they say, always leave them wanting more!

One final note. If you have any feedback on the speakers we have had in previously or have requests for topics or specific speakers for upcoming meetings I would be happy to hear them. You can contact me at the E-mail address below.

Rob Windsor
TDUG Program Coordinator
rwindsor@bigfoot.com
www.g6consulting.com

 
Links: Patterns Home Page:
hillside.net/patterns/patterns.html
Frameworks Home Page:
st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/users/johnson/frameworks.html
 
Files: Framework Presentation.zip
The PowerPoint97 slides from Robert's presentation. If you don't have PowerPoint97 you can download the PowerPoint Viewer from Microsoft at no charge.

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