Componentization: The Visitor Example

: In software design, laziness is a virtue: it's better to reuse than to redo. Design patterns are a good illustration. Patterns, a major advance in software architecture, provide a common vocabulary and a widely known catalog of design solutions addressing frequently encountered situations. But they do not support reuse, which assumes components: off-the-shelf modules ready to be integrated into an application through the sole knowledge of a program interface (API). Is it possible to go beyond patterns by componentizing them -- turning them into components? We have built a component library which answers this question positively for a large subset of the bestknown design patterns. Here we summarize these results and analyze the componentization process through the example of an important pattern, Visitor, showing how to take advantage of object-oriented language mechanisms to replace the design work of using a pattern by mere "ready-to-wear" reuse through an API. The re...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: COMPUTER
• Authors: Bertrand Meyer, Karine Arnout
• Keywords: COMPUTER 2006, Design, Design Patterns, Reuse