VisDP A Web Service for Visualizing Design Patterns on Demand.pdf

VisDP: A Web Service for Visualizing Design Patterns on Demand Jing Dong, Sheng Yang and Kang Zhang Department of Computer Science University of Texas at Dallas Richardson, TX 75083, USA {jdong,syang,kzhang}@ Abstract There are several problems when design patterns are implicit in software system designs: first, software devel- Design patterns document good design solutions to a re- opers can only communicate at the class/object level in- curring problem in a particular context. They are typically stead of the pattern level since they do not have pattern- modeled using UML. In practice, however, pattern-related related information in system designs. The benefits of de- information is lost when a design pattern is applied or sign patterns are compromised because the designers can- composed because UML does not keep track of this infor- not communicate with each other in terms of the design mation. Consequently, the designer cannot identify design patterns they use and their design decisions and tradeoffs. patterns used in software system design diagrams. The Second, each pattern often documents some ways for future benefits of design patterns are compromised because the evolutions, which are buried in system designs. Third, it designers cannot com