Design Patterns Formal Composition and Analysis

Abstract

Informal description of design patterns was adopted to facilitate their understanding by software developers. However, these descriptions lead to ambiguities limiting their successful use in real applications. Recently, several formal methods have been employed to guarantee precise specification of design pattern elements without insisting on their behavior. The main goal of this article is to propose a rewriting logic-based framework for enhancing formal description and reasoning on design patterns composition. The proposed model is integrated and executed under Maude using K-Maude tool. It allows first to associate a meta model notation, according to MDA approach, to all design patterns elements and then, a Maude semantic basis for specifying both their structural and dynamic aspects, is given. In particular, it will be shown how the authors' combined modeling approach is exploited for defining a set of operations on patterns, and how it will be used to formal analyze patterns composition.