Toward effective deployment of design patterns for software extension: a case study

  • Authors:

  • T. H. Ng;S. C. Cheung;W. K. Chan;Y. T. Yu

  • Affiliations:

  • City University of Hong Kong;Hong Kong University of Science and Technology;Hong Kong University of Science and Technology;City University of Hong Kong

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 2006 international workshop on Software quality
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

A design pattern documents a reference design for the solution to a recurring problem encountered in object-oriented software development. The fundamental theme of design patterns is to encapsulate the concepts that vary. Software practitioners generally take it for granted that achieving the pattern theme would lead to extensible software. Is such a conjecture legitimate? A direct validation of the conjecture is difficult because it requires an objective measurement of extensibility, which is still an open controversial concept. In this paper, we examine the conjecture indirectly by exploring if there is any relation between the pattern theme and the Open-Closed Principle, which has been advocated by many to achieve extensible object-oriented software. We conducted an experiment based on 98 postgraduate students in a software engineering course. The experiment suggested that the satisfaction of the pattern theme generally lead to the conformance to the Open-Closed principle. However, three exception cases were found. We look into these few exceptions and provide some analyses.