SOFTWARE PATTERNS VS QUALITY ATTRIBUTES (INVESTIGATION APPROACH)

Abstract: The development of software patterns(SPs)is aimed at providing a reliable and reusable framework for resolving similar problems within distinct contexts. To accomplish this objective competently, it is imperative to document these patterns effectively to facilitate the comprehension of their concepts to users, thereby encouraging their use over and over again. Thus, the documentation of patterns needs to explicitly explain their relationship with the quality attributes (QAs) that they support, or hinder, in order to satisfy the implementation of stakeholders” requirements. The variation in patterns descriptions in contemporary literature renders the explanation of the above relationship complex and difficult to follow. This eventually deters developers from employing patterns or causes them to overlook their QAs. Either of these scenarios may result in significant expense in terms of development time and cost, and/or attaining required system quality. This paper tries to address the aforementioned problem by comparing and analysing six well known software pattern resources, pinpointing the aspects of variation amongst authors descriptions, which lead to different relationships between patterns and QAs, which in fact cause confusion among users. Once the variance concept amongst these six resources in terms of terminology and description has been addressed, we derive a relationship matrix between the software patterns (included in these resources) and the standard ISO-9126 QAs. We believe that this research work is a positive contribution to the enhancement of techniques for documenting software patterns. It further helps improve pattern selection by users via improved prediction of output quality. Thus, to provide a reliable method for maintaining and representing the research work, we have created a database application that identifies the above relationship. This database also includes discrepancies among the documentation approaches of the six resources that we have studied, as well as the variance in pattern categorisations and terminologies. The pattern database should also serve future research endeavours. This research study received a positive response as per the findings of a questionnaire aimed at software professionals and based on the context of the preceding problem. 97 precent of the participants, from six different nations, answering the questionnaire supported this study.

Keywords: Software engineering, Software architectures, Patterns, Quality concepts, Quality analysis and evaluation, Documentation