A transformational viewpoint on design patterns






The concept of design pattern has 
had a large impact. It has greatly 
helped spreading a limited number of well-tried 
solutions to recurring object-oriented design problems. But 
as new patterns are introduced at a 
steady rate the concept must evolve so 
that tools can help programmers not to 
be lost facing a host of patterns. 
In this paper we propose that design 
patterns be systematically analyzed and reformulated to 
exhibit a reasoning binding solutions to precisely 
stated problems, given a set of mechanisms. 
We show that these mechanisms can be 
described as program transformations and how an 
assistant tool could systematically explore the set 
of potential solutions induced by these tranformations. 
This will both help the selection of 
the appropriate patterns and their instanciation in 
the context of the application under development.