Author: Dirk Riehle
Abstract: Design pattern density is a metric that measures how much of an object-oriented design can be understood and represented as instances of design patterns. Expert developers have long believed that a high design pattern density implies a high maturity of the design under inspection. This paper presents a quantifiable and observable definition of this metric. The metric is illustrated and qualitatively validated using four real-world case studies. We present several hypotheses of the metric’s meaning and their implications, including the one about design maturity. We propose that the design pattern density of a maturing framework has a fixed point and we show that if software design patterns make learning frameworks easier, a framework’s design pattern density is a measure of how much easier it will become.
Reference: In Proceedings of the 2009 Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA Onward! ‘09). ACM Press, 2009. Page 469-480.
Available as a PDF file.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Twitted by ilabra // Aug 8, 2009 at 17:26
[...] This post was Twitted by ilabra [...]
2 Diplomarbeitsthema: Design Pattern Density Validated // Sep 16, 2009 at 23:20
[...] that a high design pattern density implies a high maturity of the design under consideration. In prior work, we have defined the metric as well as an instrument to assess it in a given design. In this work, [...]
3 2009 Year-end Summary and Review // Dec 17, 2009 at 15:29
[...] published a paper on a new object-oriented metric called “design pattern density” at OOPSLA Onward! 2009; another paper on “industry experiences with design patterns” [...]
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