Advisory Committee Chair
Leon Jololian
Advisory Committee Members
Murat M Tanik
Karthikeyan Lingasubramanian
Document Type
Thesis
Date of Award
2017
Degree Name by School
Master of Electrical Engineering (MEE) School of Engineering
Abstract
Frameworks have been successfully implemented in order to simplify, in part, the software development process. There are many frameworks developed for android platforms, normally targeted towards specific tasks such as login, database connectivity etc. While various frameworks provide developers with the ability to include services into the app during development, the difficulty of doing so increases as the number of frameworks grows larger. Each framework provides one or more services, however integrating those services into the app requires intimate knowledge of all the details present in the framework. When developers include services from more than one framework, the inherent difficulty in dealing with each of the services and the possible interaction between services creates a difficult barrier for the developer to overcome. In the proposed framework, a number of services are integrated within a service layer that abstracts the underlined frameworks preventing these services from being visible to the developer. Instead, the developer sees a single interface from which services can be provisioned in a systematic way. All the details regarding the access of a service from within a framework is hidden from the developer. While this approach of hiding the frameworks may limit the overall configurability of the services, it does provide a limited version of the services that is easy for the developer to integrate into the app. It is obvious that the developer is presented with two choices when integrating services into an app. On one hand, the developer can opt to use the services directly from the frameworks, however this will require knowledge of the framework and the willingness to deal with the corresponding complexities. In return, the developer is able to have the full range in configuring the service as it is offered by the framework. On the other hand, the developer can use the abstract layer that encapsulates the various frameworks without having much knowledge about the individual frameworks. This simplifies the task of the developer in integrating these services, however some portion of the configuration for each of the services will be outside the reach of the developer. The two alternatives can be viable in certain situations. For instance, if the standard service configuration is adequate for the problem attained then the approach that uses the abstraction layer may be preferable since it will be easier to use. However, if the developer wants to configure the services in a very specific way, they will have to use the frameworks directly to achieve their goals. Keywords: Framework, Mobile App, Database Connectivity, Services
Recommended Citation
Raparla, Venkatadri, "A Mobile App Development Framework For Database Connectivity And High-Level Services" (2017). All ETDs from UAB. 2789.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/etd-collection/2789