The Design Pattern Intent Ontology- Finding the Pattern you need

Since the seminal book by the Gang of Four design patterns have proven animportant tool in software development. Over time more and more patternshave been discovered and developed for a plethora of design problems. Thesheer amount of patterns available makes it hard to impossible to findpatterns useful for solving a specific design problem. Hence tools supportingsearching and finding design patterns appropriate to a certain problemwould be very useful. In order to develop such tooling design patterns needto be described in a formal manner such that querying for them by theproblem to be solved becomes feasible. Current approaches to formalisingdesign patterns focus on the solution structure of the pattern rather than onthe problem solved by the pattern. In this book we present a formalisation ofthe intent of the 23 patterns from the Gang-of-Four book. Based on thisformalisation we have developed a Design Pattern Wizard that proposesapplicable design patterns based on a description of a design problem. Thiswork is appealing both for the professional software developer and thestudent of computer science.