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"...I would expect that readers with a basic understanding of object-oriented programming and design would find this book useful, before approaching design patterns completely. Design Patterns Explained complements the existing design patterns texts and may perform a very useful role, fitting between introductory texts such as UML Distilled and the more advanced patterns books."
--James Noble
Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design draws together the principles of object-oriented programming with the power of design patterns to create an environment for robust and reliable software development. Packed with practical and applicable examples, this book teaches you to solve common programming problems with patterns--and explains the advantages of patterns for modern software design.
Beginning with a complete overview of the fundamentals of patterns, Design Patterns Explained stresses the importance of analysis and design. The authors clearly demonstrate how patterns can facilitate the overall development process. Throughout the book, key object-oriented design principles are explained, along with the concepts and benefits behind specific patterns. With illustrative examples in C++ and Java, the book demystifies the "whys," "why nots," and "hows" of patterns and explains pattern implementation.
Key topics covered include:
From analysis to implementation, Design Patterns Explained allows you to unleash the true potential of patterns and paves the path for improving your overall designs. This book provides newcomers with a genuinely accurate and helpful introduction to object-oriented design patterns.
Click below for Sample Chapter related to this title:
shallowaych8.pdf
Preface.
From Object Orientation to Patterns to True Object Orientation.
From Artificial Intellegence to Patterns to True Object Orientation.
I. AN INTRODUCTION TO OBJECT-ORIENTED SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT.
1. The Object-Oriented Paradigm.Before The Object-Oriented Paradigm: Functional Decomposition.
The Problem of Requirements.
Dealing With Changes: With Functional Decomposition.
Dealing with Changing RequirementS.
The Object-Oriented Paradigm.
Special Object Methods.
Summary.
2. The UML - The Unified Modeling Language.Overview.
What is the UML?
Why Use the UML?
The Class Diagram.
Interaction Diagrams.
Summary.
II. THE LIMITATIONS OF TRADITIONAL OBJECT-ORIENTED DESIGN.
3. A Problem that Cries Out for Flexible Code.Overview.
Extracting Information from a CAD/CAM System.
Understand the Vocabulary.
Describe the Problem.
The Essential Challenges and Approaches.
Summary.
4. A Standard Object-Oriented Solution.Overview.
Solving With Special Cases.
Summary.
Supplement: C++ Code Examples.
III. DESIGN PATTERNS.
5. An Introduction to Design Patterns.Overview.
Design Patterns Arose from Architecture and Anthropology.
Moving from Architectural to Software Design Patterns.
Why Study Design Patterns.
Other Advantages to Studying Design Patterns.
Summary.
6. The Facade Pattern.Overview.
Introducing the Facade Pattern.
Learning the Facade Pattern.
Field Notes: The Facade Pattern.
Relating the Facade Pattern to the CAD/CAM Problem.
Summary.
7. The Adapter Pattern.Overview.
Introducing the Adapter Pattern.
Learning the Adapter Pattern.
Field Notes: The Adapter Pattern.
Relating the Adapter Pattern to the CAD/CAM Problem.
Summary.
Supplement: C++ Code Examples
8. Expanding Our Horizons.Overview.
Objects the Old Way and the New Way.
Encapsulation the Old Way and the New Way.
Find What is Varying and Encapsulate It.
Commonality / Variability and Abstract Classes.
Summary.
9. The Bridge Pattern.Overview.
Introducing the Bridge Pattern.
An Observation about Using Design Patterns.
Learning the Bridge Pattern: An Example.
The Bridge Pattern In Retrospect.
Field Notes: Using the Bridge Pattern.
Summary.
10. The Abstract Factory Pattern.Overview.
Introducing the Abstract Factory Pattern.
Learning the Abstract Factory Pattern: An Example.
Learning the Abstract Factory: Implementing It.
Field Notes: The Abstract Factory.
Relating the Abstract Factory Pattern to the CAD/CAM Problem.
Summary.
Supplement: C++ Code Examples.
IV. PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: THINKING IN PATTERNS.
11. How Do Experts Design?Section Overview.
Overview.
Building by Adding Distinctions.
Summary.
12. Solving the CAD/CAM Problem with Patterns.Overview.
Review of the CAD/CAM Problem.
Thinking in Patterns.
Thinking in Patterns: Step 1.
Thinking in Patterns: Step 2A.
Thinking in Patterns: Step 2B.
Thinking in Patterns: Step 2D (Facade).
Thinking in Patterns: Step 2D (Adapter).
Thinking in Patterns: Step 2D (Abstract Factory).
Thinking in Patterns: Step 3.
Comparison with the Previous Solution.
Summary.
13. The Principles and Strategies of Design Patterns.Overview.
The Open-Closed Principle.
The Principle of Designing from Context.
The Principle of Containing Variation.
Summary.
V. HANDLING VARIATIONS WITH DESIGN PATTERNS.
14. The Strategy Pattern.Overview.
An Approach to Handling New Requirements.
Initial Requirements of the Case Study.
Handling New Requirements.
The Strategy Pattern.
Field Notes: Using the Strategy Pattern.
Summary.
15. The Decorator Pattern.Overview.
A Little More Detail.
The Decorator Pattern.
Applying the Decorator Pattern to the Case Study.
Another Example: Input / Output.
Field Notes: Using the Decorator Pattern.
Summary.
Supplement: C++ Code Examples.
16. The Singleton Pattern and the Double-Checked Locking Pattern.Overview .
Introducing the Singleton Pattern.
Applying the Singleton Pattern to the Case Study.
A Variant: The Double-Checked Locking Pattern.
Field Notes: Using the Singleton and Double-Checked Locking Patterns.
Summary.
Supplement: C++ Code Examples.
17. The Observer Pattern.Overview.
Categories of Patterns.
More Requirements for the Case Study.
The Observer Pattern.
Applying the Observer to the Case Study.
Field Notes: Using the Observer Pattern.
Summary.
Supplement : C++ Code Examples.
18. The Template Method Pattern.Overview.
More Requirements for the Case Study.
The Template Method Pattern.
Applying the Template Method to the Case Study.
Field Notes: Using the Template Method Pattern.
Summary.
19. The Factory Method Pattern.Overview.
More Requirements for the Case Study.
The Factory Method Pattern.
Field Notes: Using the Factory Method Pattern.
Summary.
20. The Analysis Matrix.Overview.
In the Real World: Variations.
Case Study in Variation: An International E-Tail System.
Field Notes.
Summary.
VI. ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS.
21. Design Patterns Reviewed From Our New Perspective of Object-Oriented Design.Overview.
A Summary of Object-Oriented Principles.
How Design Patterns Encapsulate Implementations.
Commonality / Variability Analysis and Design Patterns.
Decomposing a Problem Domain Into Responsibilities.
Relationships Within a Pattern.
Patterns and Contextual Design.
Field Notes.
Summary.
22. Bibliography.Design Patterns Explained: The Web Site Companion.
Recommended Reading on Design Patterns and Object Orientation.
Recommended Reading for Java Programmers.
Recommended Reading for C++ Programmers.
Recommended Reading for Cobol Programmers.
Recommended Reading on eXtreme Programming.
Recommended Reading on General Programming.
Personal Favorites.
Index.Design patterns and object-oriented programming. They hold such promise to make your life as a software designer and developer easier. Their terminology is bandied about every day in the technical and even the popular press. But it can be hard to learn them, to become proficient with them, to understand what is really going on.
Perhaps you have been using an object-oriented or object-based language for years. Have you learned that the true power of objects is not inheritance but is in "encapsulating behaviors"? Perhaps you are curious about design patterns and have found the literature a bit too esoteric and high-falutin. If so, this book is for you. It is based on years of teaching this material to software developers, both experienced and new to object orientation.
It is based upon the belief--and our experience--that once you understand the basic principles and motivations that underlie these concepts, why they are doing what they do, your learning curve will be incredibly shorter. And in our discussion of design patterns, you will understand the true mindset of object orientation, which is a necessity before you can become proficient.
As you read this book, you will gain a solid understanding of the ten most essential design patterns. You will learn that design pat-terns do not exist on their own, but are supposed to work in concert with other design patterns to help you create more robust applications. You will gain enough of a foundation that you will be able to read the design pattern literature, if you want to, and possibly discover patterns on your own.
Most importantly, you will be better equipped to create flexible and complete software that is easier to maintain.
In many ways, this book is a retelling of my personal experience learning design patterns. Prior to studying design patterns, I considered myself to be reasonably expert in object-oriented analysis and design. My track record had included several fairly impressive designs and implementations in many industries. I knew C++ and was beginning to learn Java. The objects in my code were well-formed and tightly encapsulated. I could design excellent data abstractions for inheritance hierarchies. I thought I knew object-orientation.
Now, looking back, I see that I really did not understand the full capabilities of object-oriented design, even though I was doing things the way the experts advised. It wasn't until I began to learn design patterns that my object-oriented design abilities expanded and deepened. Knowing design patterns has made me a better designer, even when I don't use these patterns directly.
I began studying design patterns in 1996. I was a C++/object-oriented design mentor at a large aerospace company in the north-west. Several people asked me to lead a design pattern study group. That's where I met my co-author, Jim Trott. In the study group, several interesting things happened. First, I grew fascinated with design patterns. I loved being able to compare my designs with the designs of others who had more experience than I had. I discovered that I was not taking full advantage of designing to interfaces and that I didn't always concern myself with seeing if I could have an object use another object without knowing the used object's type. I noticed that beginners to object-oriented design--those who would normally be deemed as learning design patterns too early--were benefiting as much from the study group as the experts were. The patterns presented examples of excellent object-oriented designs and illustrated basic object-oriented principles, which helped to mature their designs more quickly. By the end of the study sessions, I was convinced that design patterns were the greatest thing to happen to software design since the invention of object-oriented design.
However, when I looked at my work at the time, I saw that I was not incorporating any design patterns into my code.
I just figured I didn't know enough design patterns yet and needed to learn more. At the time, I only knew about six of them. Then I had what could be called an epiphany. I was working on a project as a mentor in object-oriented design and was asked to create a high-level design for the project. The leader of the project was extremely sharp, but was fairly new to object-oriented design.
The problem itself wasn't that difficult, but it required a great deal of attention to make sure the code was going to be easy to maintain. Literally, after about two minutes of looking at the problem, I had developed a design based on my normal approach of data abstraction. Unfortunately, it was very clear this was not going to be a good design. Data abstraction alone had failed me. I had to find something better.
Two hours later, after applying every design technique I knew, I was no better off. My design was essentially the same. What was most frustrating was that I knew there was a better design. I just couldn't see it. Ironically, I also knew of four design patterns that "lived" in my problem but I couldn't see how to use them. Here I was a supposed expert in object-oriented design baffled by a simple problem!
Feeling very frustrated, I took a break and started walking down the hall to clear my head, telling myself I would not think of the problem for at least 10 minutes. Well, 30 seconds later, I was thinking about it again! But I had gotten an insight that changed my view of design patterns: rather than using patterns as individual items, I should use the design patterns together.
Patterns are supposed to be sewn together to solve a problem.I had heard this before, but hadn't really understood it. Because patterns in software have been introduced as design patterns, I had always labored under the assumption that they had mostly to do with design. My thoughts were that in the design world, the pat-terns came as pretty much well-formed relationships between classes. Then, I read Christopher Alexander's amazing book, The Timeless Way of Building. I learned that patterns existed at all levels--analysis, design, and implementation. Alexander discusses using patterns to help in the understanding of the problem domain (even in describing it), not just using them to create the design after the problem domain is understood.
My mistake had been in trying to create the classes in my problem domain and then stitch them together to make a final system, a process which Alexander calls a particularly bad idea. I had never asked if I had the right classes because they just seemed so right, so obvious; they were the classes that immediately came to mind as I started my analysis, the "nouns" in the description of the system that we had been taught to look for. But I had struggled trying to piece them together.
When I stepped back and used design patterns and Alexander's approach to guide me in the creation of my classes, a far superior solution unfolded in only a matter of minutes. It was a good design and we put it into production. I was excited--excited to have designed a good solution and excited about the power of design patterns. It was then that I started incorporating design patterns into my development work and my teaching. I began to discover that programmers who were new to object-oriented design could learn design patterns, and in doing so, develop a basic set of object-oriented design skills. It was true for me and it was true for the students that I was teaching.
Imagine my surprise! The design pattern books I had been reading and the design pattern experts I had been talking to were saying that you really needed to have a good grounding in object-oriented design before embarking on a study of design patterns. Nevertheless, I saw, with my own eyes, that students who learned object-oriented design concurrently with design patterns learned object-oriented design faster than those just studying object-oriented design. They even seemed to learn design patterns at almost the same rate as experienced object-oriented practitioners.
I began to use design patterns as a basis for my teaching. I began to call my classes Pattern Oriented Design: Design Patterns from Analysis to Implementation.
I wanted my students to understand these patterns and began to discover that using an exploratory approach was the best way to foster this understanding. For instance, I found that it was better to present the Bridge pattern by presenting a problem and then have my students try to design a solution to the problem using a few guiding principles and strategies that I had found were present in most of the patterns. In their exploration, the students discovered the solution--called the Bridge pattern--and remembered it.
In any event, I found that these guiding principles and strategies could be used to "derive" several of the design patterns. By "derive a design pattern," I mean that if I looked at a problem that I knew could be solved by a design pattern, I could use the guiding principles and strategies to come up with the solution that is expressed in the pattern. I made it clear to my students that we weren't really coming up with design patterns this way. Instead, I was just illustrating one possible thought process that the people who came up with the original solutions, those that were eventually classified as design patterns, might have used.
My abilities to explain these few, but powerful, principles and strategies improved. As they did, I found that it became more useful to explain an increasing number of the Gang of Four patterns. In fact, I use these principles and strategies to explain 12 of the 14 patterns I discuss in my design patterns course.
I found that I was using these principles in my own designs both with and without patterns. This didn't surprise me. If using these strategies resulted in a design equivalent to a design pattern when I knew the pattern was present, that meant they were giving me a way to derive excellent designs (since patterns are excellent designs by definition). Why would I get any poorer designs from these techniques just because I didn't know the name of the pattern that might or might not be present anyway?
These insights helped hone my training process (and now my writing process). I had already been teaching my courses on several levels. I was teaching the fundamentals of object-oriented analysis and design. I did that by teaching design patterns and using them to illustrate good examples of object-oriented analysis and design. In addition, by using the patterns to teach the concepts of object orientation, my students were also better able to understand the principles of object orientation. And by teaching the guiding principles and strategies, my students were able to create designs of comparable quality to the patterns themselves.
I relate this story because this book follows much the same pattern as my course (pun intended). In fact, from Chapter 3 on, this book is very much the first day of my two-day course: Pattern Oriented Design: Design Patterns from Analysis to Implementation.
As you read this book, you will learn the patterns. But even more importantly, you will learn why they work and how they can work together, and the principles and strategies upon which they rely. It will be useful to draw on your own experiences. When I present a problem in the text, it is helpful if you imagine a similar problem that you have come across. This book isn't about new bits of information or new patterns to apply, but rather a new way of looking at object-oriented software development. I hope that your own experiences, connected with the principles of design patterns, will prove to be a powerful ally in your learning.
--Alan Shalloway
My journey into design patterns had a different starting point than Alan's but we have reached the same conclusions:
I started my career in artificial intelligence (AI) creating rule-based expert systems. This involves listening to experts and creating mod-els of their decision-making processes and then coding these models into rules in a knowledge-based system. As I built these systems, I began to see repeating themes: in common types of problems, experts tended to work in similar ways. For example, experts who diagnose problems with equipment tend to look for simple, quick fixes first, then they get more systematic, breaking the problem into component parts; but in their systematic diagnosis, they tend to try first inexpensive tests or tests that will eliminate broad classes of problems before other kinds of tests. This was true whether we were diagnosing problems in a computer or a piece of oil field equipment.
Today, I would call these recurring themes patterns. Intuitively, I began to look for these recurring themes as I was designing new expert systems. My mind was open and friendly to the idea of pat-terns, even though I did not know what they were.
Then, in 1994, I discovered that researchers in Europe had codified these patterns of expert behavior and put them into a package that they called Knowledge Analysis and Design Support, or KADS. Dr. Karen Gardner, a most gifted analyst, modeler, mentor, and human being, began to apply KADS to her work in the United States. She extended the European's work to apply KADS to object-oriented systems. She opened my eyes to an entire world of pattern-based analysis and design that was forming in the software world, in large part due to Christopher Alexander's work. Her book, Cognitive Patterns (Cambridge University Press, 1998) describes this work.
Suddenly, I had a structure for modeling expert behaviors without getting trapped by the complexities and exceptions too early. I was able to complete my next three projects in less time, with less rework, and with greater satisfaction by end-users, because:
This last point is significant. Patterns help end-users understand systems because they provide the context for the system, why we are doing things in a certain way. We can use patterns to describe the guiding principles and strategies of the system. And we can use patterns to develop the best examples to help end-users understand the system.
I was hooked.
So, when a design patterns study group started at my place of employment, I was eager to go. This is where I met Alan who had reached a similar point in his work as an object-oriented designer and mentor. The result is this book. I hope that the principles in this book help you in your own journey to become a more effective and efficient analyst.
--James R. Trott