Objectives

Patterns (such as the famous GoF Design Patterns) are becoming essential if you want to develop reliable and maintainable software according to the proven OO principles. To start with, patterns are frequently incorporated in existing frameworks, programming languages and class libraries: if you understand patterns, you will use these programming resources more efficiently. In addition to that, being able to recognize problem situations and to actively apply patterns to them is the key to a more robust design.

This course explains what patterns are, and gives a detailed discussion of the most common design patterns (the problem, the solution, the motivation, the usage examples). and their (subtle) relations and differences. We also consider the use of patterns in specific environments (Java, .NET), for performance, for CASE tool support, etc.

Main topics

• What are patterns and why are they used?
• Software patterns (GRASP, Analysis Patterns, GoF Patterns, Java EE Patterns, MVC, ...)
• Common design patterns in detail (Strategy, Observer, Decorator, Command, Proxy, and many others...)
• Patterns in architecture and frameworks
• Pattern support in development environments and CASE tools
• Recognizing patterns and applying patterns
• Patterns and performance
• Application samples