Design pattern detection in Eiffel systems

Abstract

The use of design patterns in a software system can provide strong indications about the rationale behind the system's design. As a result, automating the detection of design pattern instances could be of significant help to the process of reverse engineering large software systems. In this paper, we introduce DPVK (Design Pattern Verification toolKit), the first reverse engineering tool to detect pattern instances in Eiffel systems. DPVK is able to detect several different design patterns by examining both the static structure and the dynamic behaviour of a system written in Eiffel. We present three case studies that were performed to assess DPVK's effectiveness.