Traditional Design Patterns
Do you know that design patterns need more connectivity across development phases?
[8] Lack of Patterns Connectivity across Development Phases [1, 2]
[8] Lack of Patterns Connectivity across Development Phases
Professor Dr. M.E. Fayad, SJSU, AITG, AEEH PRESS, i-SOLE, INCs
Greater technological connectivity makes the world wider, and the walls of isolation thinner.
Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj [3]
The point highlighted in the previous pitfall illustrated the challenge of integrating patterns within the same developmental phase. Integrating a given pattern is often a major challenge and a strenuous task for any developer of patterns. However, a different set of challenge emerges when a developer tries to introduce different types of patterns into the developmental phase of a given system. For example, let us assume that a developer uses different phases of development while designing a particular pattern.
For developers, this may pose a crucial question and a critical challenge as they use patterns within a single developmental phase, which is usually the design phase. This is probably attributable to the fact that traditional design patterns are more mature and seasoned than analysis patterns. Successful patterns designed so far always relied on using patterns in a single phase, which is probably the best avenue to exploit the strength and merit of patterns. However, it is also true that final and ultimate strength and maturity of pattern utilization will only result from using them right though the developmental cycle. Overall, improvements and differences will be seen within the each phase subsequently resulting in notable improvement as a whole. Right now, there is no known connectivity between the design and analysis patterns. Furthermore, it is still not very clear how this will be tackled and approached in the future, excepting stable software patterns [4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. Addressing such issues may become more complicated and challenging as patterns become more mature over a period and there is a burning desire on part of developers to utilize different types of patterns on a concurrent basis.
More obstacles and impediments make the scenario much more difficult for a pattern developer because both the analysis and design patterns developmental process tend to be separate fields of study.
The idea and vision of fitting these two different entities seems to be very appealing and attractive as it will assist developers realize and reach the goal of attaining the big picture of pattern utilization. Sadly, right now there is no existing methodology designed to create such connectivity. To make matters worst, patterns of a given type exist at different and varying levels of abstraction, which makes them very difficult to link together. Another negative aspect is the perceived difficulties in implementing the patterns within the software itself. For example, no proven benchmark exists that can accurately measure the effectiveness of the patterns on various issues of software, neither are there any known standards to comply with, when working on patterns or creating them.
