Functional Design Patterns:StructuredReuseOfFunctionality
Stc
Date: 2006-08-30
Time: 11:30
Room: BBL room 420
Speaker: Peter Nagel
Title: Functional design patterns: structured reuse of functionality
(master's thesis defense)
Abstract
In the development of custom administrative software systems, software
producers often create several systems that have strong similarities in
their
functionality. Unfortunately, structured reuse of such similarities is
mostly
limited to low-level technical aspects. Previous studies have introduced
the theory of functional design patterns, which is a novel approach to
structured functional reuse. Although these studies have resulted in a
variety of patterns, a methodology for functional reuse driven by functional
design patterns is not available yet. The critical obstacle lies in the huge
variety of functionality to be reused. Previous studies attempt to find a
general method for the reuse of all possible types of functionality.
However, this is a utopian method, since the specification of different
types of functionality requires tailored structuring. To provide such
tailored
structuring for specific types of functionality, functional meta-patterns
are
introduced in this research. Several meta-patterns are created, together
with functional design patterns that use the structure defined in their
meta-patterns. The meta-patterns are based on both existing methods of
software design and specification, such as UML and Object-Z, and custom
methods, such as a method for reuse of a category of workflows in
administrative software systems.
