A question-based design pattern advisement approach

Design patterns are a proven way to build flexible software architectures. But the selection of an appropriate design pattern is a difficult task in practice, particularly for less experienced developers. In this paper, a question-based design pattern advisement approach will be proposed. This approach primarily assists developers in identifying and selecting the most suitable design pattern for a given problem. We will also propose certain extensions to the existing Object-Oriented Design Ontology (ODOL). In addition to the advisement procedure, a new design pattern advisement ontology will be defined. We have also developed a tool that supports the proposed ontology and question-based advisement (OQBA) approach. The conducted controlled experiment and two surveys have shown that the proposed approach is beneficial to all software developers, especially to those who have less experience with design patterns.