[Biojava-l] Poll: is biojava a framework or library?

Spencer Bliven spencer.bliven at gmail.com
Tue Dec 11 20:03:28 UTC 2018


We've previously referred to BioJava pretty consistently as a framework
(e.g. the last paper was "BioJava: an open-source framework for
bioinformatics in 2012"). However, in the current world of Angular and
Rails, "framework" has required a more specific meaning relating to
inversion of control and clear separation between the "frozen" framework
code and the "hot" user-extensible part.

On the other hand, a "library" sounds like a collection of procedures for a
single task, and BioJava has a lot of breadth. We have lots of modules
doing very different bioinformatics tasks, and user code would typically
only include part of BioJava. We also have a few user interfaces and
command line tools included, although I consider these more like example
code then proper distributables.

What do you think? Should we refer to BioJava as a 'library' in the future,
or should we continue to use "framework" on the website and in publications?

-Spencer

Links:

   -
   https://www.programcreek.com/2011/09/what-is-the-difference-between-a-java-library-and-a-framework/
   - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_framework
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