Software Pattern Communities: Current Practices and Challenges

Software pattern users, software developers creating high-quality software systems, have few resources available to support pattern-based development practices. Patterns are currently disseminated in disjoint collections in various publishing mediums with little or no technology support. As the number of patterns and diversity of pattern types continue to proliferate, potential pattern users are faced with difficulties of understanding what patterns exist and when, where, and how to use them. This defeats the very purpose of patterns as a medium to encapsulate and disseminate recurring design experiences. In this paper, an initial study is done among a set of pattern collections in order to alert for the difficulties related to the use patterns in an effective manner to support software development activities. Based on the empirical survey, challenges are identified that define impediments to the federation of software patterns into an interconnected body of knowledge. A Semantic Web ontology is presented as an initial attempt to solving some of these issues through the use of Web-based ontologies