Automated refactoring to introduce design patterns

ABSTRACT

Software systems have to be flexible in order to cope with evolving requirements. However, since it is impossible to predict with certainty what future requirements will emerge, it is also impossible to know exactly what flexibility to build into a system. Design patterns are often used to provide this flexibility, so this question frequently reduces to whether or not to apply a given design pattern. We address this problem by developing a methodology for the construction of automated transformations that introduce design patterns. This enables a programmer to safely postpone the application of a design pattern until the flexibility it provides becomes necessary. Our approach deals with the issues of reuse of existing transformations, preservation of program behaviour and the application of the transformations to existing program code.

REFERENCES

• 1: M. O'Cinnéide , P. Nixon, A Methodology for the Automated Introduction of Design Patterns, Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance, p.463, August 30-September 03, 1999
• 2: A. H. Eden , A. Yehudai , J. Gil, Precise specification and automatic application of design patterns, Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Automated software engineering (formerly: KBSE), p.143, November 02-05, 1997
• 3: Gert Florijn,Marco Meijers,and P.an Winsen. Tool support in design patterns.In Proceedings of the European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming June 1997.
• 4: 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
• 5: William F. Opdyke, Refactoring object-oriented frameworks, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, 1992
• 6: Donald Bradley Roberts , Ralph Johnson, Practical analysis for refactoring, 1999
• 7: Don Roberts , John Brant , Ralph Johnson, A refactoring tool for Smalltalk, Theory and Practice of Object Systems, v.3 n.4, p.253-263, 1997 [doi>10.1002/(SICI)1096-9942(1997)3:4<253::AID-TAPO3>3.3.CO;2-I]
• 8: Paolo Tonella , Giulio Antoniol, Object Oriented Design Pattern Inference, Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance, p.230, August 30-September 03, 1999

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.6 MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
      K.6.3 Software Management
          Subjects: Software maintenance

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
        D.2.11 Software Architectures
            Subjects: Patterns (e.g., client/server, pipeline, blackboard)

General Terms:
Design, Management, Performance, Reliability, Theory

Keywords:
behaviour preservation, design pattern, program refactorings