Abstract

Since the publication of the Design Patterns book, a large number of design patterns have been identified and codified. Unfortunately, these patterns are mostly organised in an ad hoc fashion, making it hard for programmers to know which pattern to apply to any particular problem. We have organised a large number of existing object oriented design patterns into a pattern language, by analysing the patterns and the relationships between them. Organising patterns into languages has the potential to make large collections of patterns easier to understand and to use. 1: Introduction A object oriented design pattern is a "description of communicating objects and classes that are customised to solve a general design problem in a particular context" [12, p.3]. Designers can incorporate patterns into their programs to address general problems in the structure of their programs' designs. Before they can apply a pattern to solve their design problem, programmers must select an appropriate desig...

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