Software Quality Journal

, Volume 18, Issue 2, pp 269–297 | Cite as

Design pattern evolutions in QVT

Article
First Online:

Abstract

One of the main goals of design patterns is to design for change. Many design patterns leave some room for future changes and evolutions. The application of design patterns leads to adaptable software since the design pattern instances could be changed with minimal impact on other parts of the system. Such changes, called the evolution of a design pattern instance in this paper, typically involve the addition or removal of a group of model elements, such as classes, attributes, operations, and relationships. However, the possible evolutions of each design pattern are often not explicitly documented. Missing a part of the evolution process may result in inconsistent evolutions. In this paper, we present our approach to assist the evolution processes of design patterns by model transformation technology. We provide a formal foundation for our approach by defining the predicates that can be used to describe the properties of each design pattern, software system design, and design pattern evolutions. We also provide tool support to automate the evolution processes based on the Query, View, and Transformation standard. A case study of a large open-source software system is conducted to illustrate and evaluate our approach.

Keywords

Design pattern evolution Model transformation UML QVT Model-driven architecture 
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Computer Science DepartmentUniversity of Texas at DallasRichardsonUSA
  2. 2.American AirlinesFort WorthUSA

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