Applying design patterns to flexibly configure network service in distributed systems

• Authors: Douglas C. Schmidt
• Venue: Design patterns in communications software
• Year: 2001

THIS CHAPTER DESCRIBES how design patterns help to enhance the flexibility and extensibility of communication software by permitting network services to evolve independently to the strategies used to passively initialize the services. The chapter makes three contributions to the study and development of configurable distributed applications. First, it identifies five orthogonal dimensions of passive service initialization: service adveritisement, endpoint listening, service handler creation, passive connection establishment, and service handler activation. Second, the chapter illustrates how design patterns have been used to build a communication software framework that supports flexible configuraton of different strategies for each of these five dimensions. Third, the chapter demonstrates how design patterns and frameworks are being used successfully to develop highly configurable production distributed systems.