ARCHITECTURE V/S FRAMEWORK

[thomas davis]

What is the difference between architecture and framework?
Is MVC an architecture or a frame work?
Could somebody list out the examples of framework and architecture?

[himanshu patel]

It would also be a great if someone helps me to understand difference between framework and design, if possible with examples.
Himanshu

[Andy Bowes]

Hi Thomas,
Architecture tends to be more theoretical and frameworks are physical implementations of the architecture.
i.e. MVC is an Architecture, Struts is a framework that implements MVC.
Architectures use design patterns to describe the strutcure of a solution, frameworks provide concrete implementations of these designs.
HTH

[Stan James]

I like that Andy got "pattern" in there. A line I remember is that an architecture describes aspects of a design that can be used or found in multiple implementations. I collected some other definitions of architecture on my site just for grins.
There are numerous conflicting definitions of "framework", too. Many frameworks "invert control" in that they manage the main flow of processing and call out to your code giving you opportunities to customize what's going on. Less ambitious frameworks just give you a skeletal implementation you can build on.
[ July 02, 2003: Message edited by: Stan James ]

[SAFROLE YUTANI]

A framework is basically a template that is based on a design pattern, or collection of design patterns. There are many frameworks in J2EE, such as EJB, Servlets, JMS, these are all frameworks in that you cannot use them directly unless you, or a vendor, provides an implementation of the interfaces and/or other abstractions within the framework. A library is a direct implementation of a framework that can be used without any extra implementation; exmaples of this include JFC/Swing.
Raffi