Interactive Visualization of Design Patterns Can Help in Framework Understanding

Framework programming is regarded as one the main advantages of object-oriented software engineering, and is expected to increase software reuse. In exploiting frameworks, however, programmers often face difficulties caused by the complexity of the hidden architecture and the multiplicity of the design decisions that are embedded in a framework. Interactive visualization of design patterns occurring in a framework shows how the framework is operating, in a flexible yet structured way that contributes to the programmer's understanding of the underlying software architecture. In this way, programmers can explore and use frameworks efficiently even when they are distributed without vast amounts of documentation and source code. © 1995, ACM. All rights reserved.