A Process to Derive Domain-Specific Patterns: Application to the Real Time Domain

Abstract

Domain Specific Design Patterns are sets of objects and components that capture the experts knowledge and that can be used in a specific software domain. They provide for a higher software quality and a reduced development cost. However, their design remains a difficult task due to the generality and variability they must encompass, in order to be instantiated for various applications in the domain. This paper presents a design process that generates domain specific design patterns from a set of concrete application designs. The proposed process defines unification rules that apply a set of comparison criteria on various applications in the pattern domain. In addition, domain requirements, constraints and invariants are extracted and then confronted to the pattern, in order to validate it. The process integrates bottom-up and top-down approaches and assists the designer in the construction of domain specific patterns. Finally, the design process is illustrated and evaluated through the design of a pattern in the real-time domain.