Making Design Patterns explicit in FACE, a Framework Adaptive Composition Environment

Abstract

. Creating applications using object-oriented frameworks is done at a relatively low abstraction level, leaving a large gap with the high abstraction level of a design. This makes the use of a framework difficult, and allows design and realization to diverge. Design patterns are more specific elements of design, and thus reduce this gap. We even bridge this gap by making design patterns and the classes that play a role within them into special purpose software components. System realization becomes a matter of composing special purpose class-components. We also introduce a system, FACE, which supports the visual composition of such specifications. 1 Introduction When comparing the development of applications using frameworks [6] to the development of applications using libraries or from scratch, using a framework is ---after a learning period--- significantly less labour intensive [19]. Thus frameworks have a large commercial value. Still, the use and evolution of a framework..