PHP & Application Frameworks
About Application Frameworks
An application framework's foremost goal is to ease development of applications. Usually a framework consists of a set of classes that provide common functionality found in applications, such as authentication, authorization, and database connectivity. As an alternative to creating such functionality from scratch, a framework can significantly reduce the amount of time needed to develop an application.
The more standard functionality a framework can offer, the bigger the advantages. The downside is that the bigger the framework, the more it influences the architecture of the application. The ability to customize the framework is therefore essential. Fortunately, most object-oriented frameworks offer this possibility.
Lately, the term business framework has been gaining momentum. Whereas a "regular" framework targets application development in general, and as such offers functionality found commonly in applications and Web sites, a business framework is targeted at professional business applications. A business framework should help developers write a business application by letting them focus on the business logic. All application "plumbing," such as how to handle the user interface, how to interact with a database, how to handle sessions, and so on, should be dealt with by the framework (but remain customizable, should the need arise).
Business frameworks usually make use of reusable "business objects," or "entities," that define the data model of the application and contain all the business logic. These business objects form the core of an application. Some frameworks use XML to describe these objects; others, such as ATK, use code. The Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) for Java is an example of a framework that uses a combination of XML and code.
About Achievo ATK
Achievo ATK is a business framework that has taken the goal of speeding up development to heart. All parts of the framework are intended to reduce the amount of code an application requires. Instead of providing a large set of utility classes to maximize functionality, it provides a common framework to minimize coding. All new features are carefully considered and are added only if they reduce development time in some area.
The addition of new Achievo ATK features is partly a matter of evolutionary development. No development team is responsible for new features; rather, the framework is extended based on the requirements of the applications that use it.
Prerequisites
To be able to work with the examples in this article, note the following:
You need a working Oracle database (Oracle9i or Oracle 10g).
The scott/tiger example schema should be installed and usable.
You need a Web server with the PHP scripting language that can connect to the Oracle database (see the documentation on this site for help on installing this).
You need a Web browser.
Some knowledge of PHP would be useful but is not essential for understanding the examples in this article.
In php.ini, make sure the setting for error_reporting is set to E_ALL~E_NOTICE, because ATK contains a few notices that might show up. This setting is the default on most PHP installations. On Windows installations, it tends to be set to E_ALL by default, though.
An application framework's foremost goal is to ease development of applications. Usually a framework consists of a set of classes that provide common functionality found in applications, such as authentication, authorization, and database connectivity. As an alternative to creating such functionality from scratch, a framework can significantly reduce the amount of time needed to develop an application.
The more standard functionality a framework can offer, the bigger the advantages. The downside is that the bigger the framework, the more it influences the architecture of the application. The ability to customize the framework is therefore essential. Fortunately, most object-oriented frameworks offer this possibility.
Lately, the term business framework has been gaining momentum. Whereas a "regular" framework targets application development in general, and as such offers functionality found commonly in applications and Web sites, a business framework is targeted at professional business applications. A business framework should help developers write a business application by letting them focus on the business logic. All application "plumbing," such as how to handle the user interface, how to interact with a database, how to handle sessions, and so on, should be dealt with by the framework (but remain customizable, should the need arise).
Business frameworks usually make use of reusable "business objects," or "entities," that define the data model of the application and contain all the business logic. These business objects form the core of an application. Some frameworks use XML to describe these objects; others, such as ATK, use code. The Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) for Java is an example of a framework that uses a combination of XML and code.
About Achievo ATK
Achievo ATK is a business framework that has taken the goal of speeding up development to heart. All parts of the framework are intended to reduce the amount of code an application requires. Instead of providing a large set of utility classes to maximize functionality, it provides a common framework to minimize coding. All new features are carefully considered and are added only if they reduce development time in some area.
The addition of new Achievo ATK features is partly a matter of evolutionary development. No development team is responsible for new features; rather, the framework is extended based on the requirements of the applications that use it.
Prerequisites
To be able to work with the examples in this article, note the following:
You need a working Oracle database (Oracle9i or Oracle 10g).
The scott/tiger example schema should be installed and usable.
You need a Web server with the PHP scripting language that can connect to the Oracle database (see the documentation on this site for help on installing this).
You need a Web browser.
Some knowledge of PHP would be useful but is not essential for understanding the examples in this article.
In php.ini, make sure the setting for error_reporting is set to E_ALL~E_NOTICE, because ATK contains a few notices that might show up. This setting is the default on most PHP installations. On Windows installations, it tends to be set to E_ALL by default, though.
posted by Rizwan Akram at 11:29 PM
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