Automating the development of pattern-oriented designs for application specific software systems

Object-oriented design patterns are introduced to document good-quality reusable design practices. A design pattern abstracts a solution structure that is mostly described in terms of a set of collaborating classes or objects. Composing these design structures to develop application-specific designs involves an integration process that glues patterns together. A tool-support for the integration process will expedite the design phase. Current OO modeling tools do not explicitly support patterns as architecture constructs with interfaces. We report on a prototype tool that supports visual composition of design patterns. The tool is called the Pattern-Oriented Design (POD) tool. The POD tool can be used to develop application-specific pattern-oriented designs. It facilitates the process of integrating patterns at the architecture level using the notion of pattern interfaces. The tool supports three hierarchical traceable pattern-level design models, namely the Pattern-Level view, the Pattern Interfaces view, and the Detailed Pattern-level view. Current visual modeling tools do not explicitly support the concepts of pattern views and pattern interfaces. The proposed tool facilitates the process of designing applications using patterns as design components, it integrates with existing object-oriented modeling tools, and it provides a mechanism to trace patterns through various abstraction levels. We use a feedback control framework as an illustrative example to show how the tool can be used to develop pattern-oriented designs for application-specific systems