Can Styles Improve Architectural Pattern Reuse ?

Abstract

Software patterns are generic solutions to recurring problems. They are represented as a triplet (problem, context, solution). Several kinds of software patterns were identified, examples of which are analysis, architecture, design or implementation patterns. The current practice is to represent patterns as documents that communicate best practices. Their reuse is limited by several factors among which the lack of formalization. In the context of architecture centered software development, architectural styles are means to represent families of software systems. Several architecture description languages offer support for representing architectural styles. We believe that the use of architectural styles in the representation of architectural pattern solutions can improve the pattern reuse level. The paper details how this improvement can be achieved.