Design patterns and Fortran 90/95

ABSTRACT

In the literature on object oriented programming (OO), design patterns are a very popular subject. Apart from any hype that may be connected to the concept, they are supposed to help you look at a programming problem and come up with a robust design for its solution. The reason design patterns work is not that they are something new, but instead that they are time-honoured, well-developed solutions.I will not repeat the story about architectural design patterns and Christopher Alexander who recognised their potential. Instead I will try to explain how these (software) design patterns can be used in setting up Fortran 90/95 programs, despite the "fact" that Fortran 90/95 lacks certain OO features, such as inheritance and polymorphism. It may not be stressed in all OO literature, but design patterns help you find solutions that do not necessarily involve inheritance or polymorphism (cf. Shalloway and Trott, 2002).Design patterns come by fancy names such as the Adapter pattern or the Decorations pattern and explaining what they are and how to use them is best done via a few examples.

REFERENCES

• 1: C. L. Lawson , R. J. Hanson , D. R. Kincaid , F. T. Krogh, Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms for Fortran Usage, ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software (TOMS), v.5 n.3, p.308-323, Sept. 1979 [doi>10.1145/355841.355847]
• 2: J. Dongerra, V. Eijkhout and A. Kalhan (1995) Reverse Communication Interface for Linear Algebra Templates for Iterative Methods http://www.netlib.org/lapack/lawnspdf/lawn99.pdf
• 3: Erich Gamma , Richard Helm , Ralph Johnson , John Vlissides, Design patterns: elements of reusable object-oriented software, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1995
• 4: K. Radhakrishnan and A.C. Hindmarsh (1993) Description and Use of LSODE, the Livermore Solver for Ordinary Differential Equations NASA, Reference Publication 1327, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Report UCRL-ID-113855 http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/GLTRS/browse.pl?2003/RP-1327.html
• 5: Design patterns explained: a new perspective on object-oriented design, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 2001

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.2 Design Tools and Techniques
          Subjects: Object-oriented design methods

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
        D.2.11 Software Architectures
            Subjects: Patterns (e.g., client/server, pipeline, blackboard)
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.2 Language Classifications

          Nouns: Fortran 90

General Terms:
Design