Article

Elemental Design Patterns: A Formal Semantics for Composition of OO Software Architecture

Authors:

Jason McC. Smith,

David StottsAuthors Info & Claims

SEW '02: Proceedings of the 27th Annual NASA Goddard Software Engineering Workshop (SEW-27'02)

Page 183

Published: 05 December 2002 Publication History

Abstract

Design patterns are an important concept in the field of software engineering, providing a language and application independent method for expressing and conveying lessons learned by experienced designers. There is a large gap, however, between the aesthetic and elegance of the patterns as intended and the reality of working with an ultimately mathematically expressible system such as code. In this paper we describe a step towards meaningful formal analysis of code within the language of patterns, and discuss potential uses. The major contributions include: a compendium of Elemental Design Patterns (EDPs), a layer of seemingly simplistic relationships between objects that, on closer inspection, provide a critical link between the world of formal analysis and the realm of pattern design and implementation without reducing the patterns to merely syntactic constructs; an extension to the ò -calculus, termed ñ -calculus, a formal notation for expressing relationships between theelements of object oriented languages, and its use in expressing the EDPs directly. We discuss their use in composition and decomposition of existing patterns, identification of pattern use in existing code to aid comprehension, and future research directions, such as support for refactoring of designs, interaction with traditional code analysis systems, and the education of students of software architecture.

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Cited By

Maggioni SArcelli FCanfora GConcas GMarchesi MTempero EZhang H(2010)Metrics-based detection of micro patternsProceedings of the 2010 ICSE Workshop on Emerging Trends in Software Metrics10.1145/1809223.1809229(39-46)Online publication date: 4-May-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1809223.1809229
Zheng YXue JLiu W(2006)Object-Oriented specification composition and refinement via category theoretic computationsProceedings of the Third international conference on Theory and Applications of Models of Computation10.5555/2119353.2119452(601-610)Online publication date: 15-May-2006
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2119353.2119452
Gil JMaman I(2005)Micro patterns in Java codeACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/1103845.109481940:10(97-116)Online publication date: 12-Oct-2005
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1103845.1094819
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cover image Guide Proceedings

SEW '02: Proceedings of the 27th Annual NASA Goddard Software Engineering Workshop (SEW-27'02)

December 2002

ISBN:0769518559

Copyright © Copyright (c) 2003 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. All rights reserved.

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IEEE Computer Society

United States

Publication History

Published: 05 December 2002

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Cited By

Maggioni SArcelli FCanfora GConcas GMarchesi MTempero EZhang H(2010)Metrics-based detection of micro patternsProceedings of the 2010 ICSE Workshop on Emerging Trends in Software Metrics10.1145/1809223.1809229(39-46)Online publication date: 4-May-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1809223.1809229
Zheng YXue JLiu W(2006)Object-Oriented specification composition and refinement via category theoretic computationsProceedings of the Third international conference on Theory and Applications of Models of Computation10.5555/2119353.2119452(601-610)Online publication date: 15-May-2006
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2119353.2119452
Gil JMaman I(2005)Micro patterns in Java codeACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/1103845.109481940:10(97-116)Online publication date: 12-Oct-2005
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1103845.1094819
Gil JMaman IJohnson RBaniassad EGabriel RNoble JMarick B(2005)Micro patterns in Java codeProceedings of the 20th annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications10.1145/1094811.1094819(97-116)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2005
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1094811.1094819
Smith JStotts D(2003)SPQRProceedings of the 18th IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1109/ASE.2003.1240309(215-224)Online publication date: 6-Oct-2003
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ASE.2003.1240309

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