Regarding factory patterns

[Paritosh H Chandorkar]

Hello All,

What is the exact difference between Abstract Factory and Factory method design patterns?
What is the difference in their application?

Can someone explain me this point.

Thanks and regards,
Paritosh Chandorkar

[Mainak Goswami]

You can consider the abstract factory pattern as parent of factory method pattern...basically the abstract factory represents multiple factories and provide a single view to the client.

Abstract Factory Design Pattern provides an interface for creating families of related or dependent objects without specifying their concrete classes.

example in j2ee:
Data Access Object in JEE uses the (GoF) Abstract Factory Pattern to create various product DAO from RdbDAOFactory, XmlDAOFactory, OdbDAOFactory.

Tried to explain with example in the following articles:
abstract factory : http://idiotechie.com/abstract-factory-design-pattern-explained/
factory method: http://idiotechie.com/design-best-practices-using-factory-method-pattern/

Hope this helps.