How to Solve Design Problems Using Design Patterns

Chapter 1 Introduction

Designing object-oriented software is hard, and designing reusable object-oriented software is even harder.

It takes a long time for novices to learn what good object-oriented design is all about. Experienced designers evidently know something inexperienced ones don't.

Expert designers find recurring patterns of classes and communicating objects in many object-oriented systems, and can apply them immediately to design problems without having to rediscover them.

Recording experience in designing object-oriented software as design patterns.

Design patterns make it easier to reuse successful designs and architectures.

What is a Design Pattern?

Christopher Alexander says, "Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice".

Four essential elements of a pattern::

The pattern name is a handle we can use to describe a design problem, its solutions, and consequences in a word or two.
The problem describes when to apply the pattern.
The solution describes the elements that make up the design, their relationships, responsibilities, and collaborations
The consequences are the results and trade-offs of applying the pattern.

The design patterns are descriptions of communicating objects and classes that are customized to solve a general design problem in a particular context.

Design Patterns in Smalltalk MVC

Model is the application object

View is the model's screen presentation

Controller defines the way the user interface reacts to user input.

MVC decouples views and models by establishing a subscribe/notify protocol between them.

The design is applicable to a more general problem: decoupling objects so that changes to one can affect any number of others without requiring the changed object to know details of the others. (Observer design pattern)

MVC supports nested views with the CompositeView class, a subclass of View. (Composite design pattern).

MVC also lets you change the way a view responds to user input without changing its visual presentation by encapsulating the response mechanism in a Controller object. (Strategy design pattern)

MVC uses Factory Method design pattern to specify the default controller class for a view and Decorator design pattern to add scrolling to a view.

Describing Design Patterns

Pattern Name and Classification
Intent

What does the design pattern do? What is its rationale and intent? What particular design issue or problem does it address?

Also Known As

Motivation

A scenario that illustrates a design problem and how the class and object structures in the pattern solve the problem.

Applicability

What are the situations in which the design pattern can be applied?

Structure

A graphical representation of the classes in the pattern using a notation based on OMT or UML.

Participants

The classes and/or objects participating in the design pattern and their responsibilities.

Collaborations

How the participants collaborate to carry out their responsibilities.

Consequences

How does the pattern support its objectives? What are the trade-offs and results of using the pattern?

Implementation

What should you be aware of when implementing the pattern? Are there language-specific issues?

Sample Code

Code fragments that illustrate how you might implement the pattern in particular object-oriented programming languages.

Known Uses

Examples of the pattern found in real systems.

Related Patterns

The Catalog of Design Patterns

Abstract Factory provides an interface for creating families of related or dependent objects without specifying their concrete classes.
Adapter converts the interface of a class into another interface clients expect. Adapter lets classes work together that couldn't otherwise because of incompatible interfaces.
Bridge decouples an abstraction from its implementation so that the two can vary independently.
Builder separates the construction of a complex object from its representation so that the same construction process can create different representations.
Chain of Responsibility avoids coupling the sender of a request to its receiver by giving more than one object a chance to handle the request. Chain the receiving objects and pass the request along the chain until an object handles it.
Command encapsulates a request as an object, thereby letting you parameterize clients with different requests, queue or log requests, and support undoable operations.
Composite composes objects into tree structures to represent part-whole hierarchies. Composite lets clients treat individual objects and compositions of objects uniformly.
Decorator attaches additional responsibilities to an object dynamically. Decorators provide a flexible alternative to subclassing for extending functionality.
Facade provides a unified interface to a set of interfaces in a subsystem. Facade defines a higher-level interface that makes the subsystem easier to use.
Factory Method defines an interface for creating an object, but let subclasses decide which class to instantiate. Factory Method lets a class defer instantiation to subclasses.
Flyweight uses sharing to support large numbers of fine-grained objects efficiently.
Interpreter,given a language, defines a represention for its grammar along with an interpreter that uses the representation to interpret sentences in the language.
Iterator provides a way to access the elements of an aggregate object sequentially without exposing its underlying representation.
Mediator defines an object that encapsulates how a set of objects interact.
Memento, without violating encapsulation, captures and externalizes an object's internal state so that the object can be restored to this state later.
Observer defines a one-to-many dependency between objects so that when one object changes state, all its dependents are notified and updated automatically.
Prototype specifies the kinds of objects to create using a prototypical instance, and create new objects by copying this prototype.
Proxy provides a surrogate or placeholder for another object to control access to it.
Singleton ensures a class only has one instance, and provide a global point of access to it.
State allows an object to alter its behavior when its internal state changes. The object will appear to change its class.
Strategy defines a family of algorithms, encapsulate each one, and make them interchangeable. Strategy lets the algorithm vary independently from clients that use it.
Template Method defines the skeleton of an algorithm in an operation, deferring some steps to subclasses. Template Method lets subclasses redefine certain steps of an algorithm without changing the algorithm's structure.
Visitor represents an operation to be performed on the elements of an object structure. Visitor lets you define a new operation without changing the classes of the elements on which it operates.

Organizing the Catalog


		Purpose
Creational	Structural		Behavioral
Scope	Class	Factory Method	Adapter		Interpreter Template Method
	Object	Abstract Factory Builder Prototype Singleton	Adapter Bridge Composite Decorator Facade Proxy	Chain of Responsibility Command Iterator Mediator Memento Flyweight Observer State Strategy Visitor

How Design Patterns Solve Design Problems

1 . Finding Appropriate Objects

Design patterns help you identify less-obvious abstractions and the objects that can capture them.

2. Determining Object Granularity

Facade pattern describes how to represent complete subsystems as objects.

Flyweight pattern describes how to support huge numbers of objects at the finest granularities.

Abstract Factory and Builder yield objects whose only responsibilities are creating other objects.

Visitor and Command yield objects whose only responsibilities are to implement a request on another object or group of objects .

3. Specifying Object Interfaces

The set of all signatures defined by an object's operations is called the interface to the object.

A type is a name used to denote a particular interface.

An object may have many types, and widely different objects can share a type.

A type is a subtype of another if its interface contains the interface of its supertype, or a subtype inheriting the interface of its supertype.

Objects are known only through their interfaces. An object's interface says nothing about its implementation

When a request is sent to an object, the particular operation that's performed depends on both the request and the receiving object.

Dynamic binding: the run-time association of a request to an object and one of its operations.

Polymorphism: dynamic binding can substitute objects that have identical interfaces for each other at run-time

Design patterns help you define interfaces by identifying their key elements and the kinds of data that get sent across an interface.

Design patterns also specify relationships between interfaces.

4. Specifying Object Implementations

An object's implementation is defined by its class .

An abstract class is one whose main purpose is to define a common interface for its subclasses .

A mixin class is a class that's intended to provide an optional interface or functionality to other classes .

Class versus Interface Inheritance

An object's class defines how the object is implemented.

An object's type only refers to its interface.

An object can have many types.

Objects of different classes can have the same type.

Relationship between class and type: class as type (C++) vs. interface as type (Java).

Class inheritance: Sub-typing + Implementation inheritance

Interface inheritance: Sub-typing only (Polymorphism)

Pure abstract classes as interfaces.

Many of the design patterns depend on the distinction between class and interface inheritances

First Principle of reusable object-oriented design: Programming to an Interface, not an Implementation

Class inheritance-based implementation reuse is only half the story. Inheritance's ability to define families of objects with identical interfaces is also important, because polymorphism depends on it.

Two benefits to manipulating objects solely in terms of the interface defined by abstract classes:

Clients remain unaware of the specific types of objects they use, as long as the objects adhere to the interface that clients expect.
Clients remain unaware of the classes that implement these objects. Clients only know about the abstract class(es) defining the interface.

Don't declare variables to be instances of particular concrete classes.
Creational patterns ensure that your system is written in terms of interfaces, not implementations.

5. Putting Reuse Mechanisms to Work

Inheritance versus Composition

White-box reuse: class inheritance.

Black-box reuse: object composition

Class inheritance:

Advantages

supported by programming languages, defined statically at compile-time and is straightforward to use
make it easier to modify the implementation being reused, when a subclass overrides some but not all operations.

Disadvantages

Cannot change the implementations/representations inherited from parent classes at run-time
Implementation dependency between a subclass and its parent class.

Object composition

Advantages

Defined dynamically at run-time by referencing interfaces of objects.

Access other objects though their interfaces only, not break encapsulation.

Fewer implementation dependencies.

Small class hierarchies

Disadvantages

More objects
The system's behavior will depend on their interrelationships instead of being defined in one class

The second principle of object-oriented design:

Favor object composition over class inheritance.

Delegation

In delegation, two objects are involved in handling a request: a receiving object delegates operations to its delegate.
The receiver passes itself to the delegate to let the delegated operation refer to the receiver.

Advantage: it makes it easy to compose behaviors at run-time and to change the way they're composed.

Disadvantage: harder to understand than more static software, and run-time inefficiencies,

Delegation works best when it's used in standard patterns.

Design patterns that use delegation: State, Strategy, Visitor, Mediator, Chain of Responsibility, and Bridge patterns.

6. Relating Run-Time and Compile-Time Structures

An object-oriented program's run-time structure often bears little resemblance to its code structure.

Aggregation

Manifested at run-times.
One object owns (having) or is responsible for another object (being part).

Acquaintance

Manifested at compile-times.
An object merely knows of another object (association, using).
A weaker relationship than aggregation.

In implementation or code, aggregation and acquaintance cannot be distinct.

Many design patterns capture the distinction between compile-time and run-time structures explicitly..

The run-time structures aren't clear from the code until you understand the patterns.

7. Designing for Change

Common causes of redesign along with the design pattern(s) that address them:

Creating an object by specifying a class explicitly.

Design patterns: Abstract Factory, Factory Method, Prototype.

Dependence on specific operations..

Design patterns: Chain of Responsibility, Command.

Dependence on hardware and software platform..

Design patterns: Abstract Factory, Bridge.

Dependence on object representations or implementations..

Design patterns: Abstract Factory, Bridge, Memento, Proxy.

Algorithmic dependencies.

Design patterns: Builder, Iterator , Strategy, Template Method , Visitor.

Tight coupling.

Design patterns: Abstract Factory, Bridge, Chain of Responsibility, Command, Facade, Mediator, Observer.

Extending functionality by subclassing.

Design patterns: Bridge, Chain of Responsibility, Composite, Decorator, Observer, Strategy.

Inability to alter classes conveniently.

Design patterns: Adapter, Decorator, Visitor.

The role design patterns play in the development of three broad classes of software: application programs, toolkits, and frameworks.

Application Programs

Internal reuse, maintainability, and extension are high priorities.
Design patterns that reduce dependencies can increase internal reuse.
Design patterns make an application more maintainable when they're used to limit platform dependencies and to layer a system.
Design patterns enhance extensibility.

Toolkits (class/component libraries)

Code reuse
Application-general design

Frameworks

A framework is a set of cooperating classes that make up a reusable design for a specific class of software
The framework dictates the architecture of your application.
Frameworks emphasize design reuse over code reuse.
Frameworks are implemented as class hierarchies..
Reuse on framework level leads to an inversion of control between the application and the software on which it's based.
Mature frameworks usually incorporate several design patterns
Design patterns vs. frameworks

Design patterns are more abstract than frameworks.

Design patterns are smaller architectural elements than frameworks.

Design patterns are less specialized than frameworks.

How to Select a Design Pattern

Consider how design patterns solve design problems.

Scan Intent sections.

Study how patterns interrelate.

Study patterns of like purpose.

Examine a cause of redesign.

Consider what should be variable in your design.

Purpose


Design Pattern	Aspect(s) That Can Vary
Creational	Abstract Factory	families of product objects
	Builder	how a composite object gets created
	Factory Method	subclass of object that is instantiated
	Prototype	class of object that is instantiated
	Singleton	the sole instance of a class
Structural	Adapter	interface to an object
	Bridge	implementation of an object
	Composite	structure and composition of an object
	Decorator	responsibilities of an object without subclassing
	Facade	interface to a subsystem
	Flyweight	storage costs of objects
	Proxy	how an object is accessed; its location
Behavioral	Chain of Responsibility	object that can fulfill a request
	Command	when and how a request is fulfilled
	Interpreter	grammar and interpretation of a language
	Iterator	how an aggregate's elements are accessed, traversed
	Mediator	how and which objects interact with each other
	Memento	what private information is stored outside an object, and when
	Observer	number of objects that depend on another object; how the dependent objects stay up to date
	State	states of an object
	Strategy	an algorithm
	Template Method	steps of an algorithm
	Visitor	operations that can be applied to object(s) without changing their class(es)

How to Use a Design Pattern

Read the pattern once through for an overview. Pay particular attention to the Applicability and Consequences sections to ensure the pattern is right for your problem.

Go back and study the Structure, Participants, and Collaborations sections. Make sure you understand the classes and objects in the pattern and how they relate to one another.

Look at the Sample Code section to see a concrete example of the pattern in code. Studying the code helps you learn how to implement the pattern.

Choose names for pattern participants that are meaningful in the application context.

Define the classes.

Define application-specific names for operations in the pattern.

Implement the operations to carry out the responsibilities and collaborations in the pattern. The Implementation section offers hints to guide you in the implementation.

How to Solve Design Problems Using Design Patterns

Source: http://www.cs.unb.ca/~wdu/cs4015w02/ch1.htm