Stepwise framework design by application unification

Frameworks are a promising technology for software design reuse. However, their difficult design may impede their widespread use in software engineering. This paper presents a framework design process for F-UML, an object-oriented design language that offers graphical annotations to guide framework reuse. The F-UML design process is based on a stepwise, bottom-up unification by applying a set of comparison rules on various applications in the framework domain.