When it comes to frameworks, the familiar story of the elephant and the six blind philosophers seems to apply. As each philoso pher encountered a separate part of the elephant, each pronounced his considered, but flawed judgement. One blind philosopher felt a leg and thought it a tree. Another felt the tail and thought he held a rope. Another felt the elephant's flank and thought he stood before a wall. We're supposed to learn about snap judgements from this alle gory, but its author might well have been describing design automation frameworks. For in the reality of today's product development requirements, a framework must be many things to many people. xiv CAD Frameworks: Integration Technology for CAD As the authors of this book note, framework design is an optimi zation problem. Somehow, it has to be both a superior rope for one and a tremendous tree for another. Somehow it needs to provide a standard environment for exploiting the full potential of computer-aided engineering tools. And, somehow, it has to make real such abstractions as interoperability and interchangeability. For years, we've talked about a framework as something that provides application-oriented services, just as an operating system provides system-level support. And for years, that simple statement has hid the tremendous complexity of actually providing those services.
