Automatic Recommendation of Software Design Patterns Using Anti-patterns in the Design Phase: A Case Study on Abstract Factory

Anti-patterns, one of the reasons for software design problems, can be solved by applying proper design patterns. If anti-patterns are discovered in the design phase, this should lead an early pattern recommendation by using relationships between antiand design patterns. This paper presents an idea called Antipattern based Design Pattern Recommender (ADPR), that uses design diagrams i.e. class and sequence diagrams to detect antipatterns and recommend corresponding design patterns. First of all, anti-patterns relating to specific design patterns are analyzed. Those anti-patterns are detected in the faulty software design to identify the required design patterns. For assessment, a case study is shown along with the experimental result analysis. Initially, ADPR is prepared for recommendation of the Abstract Factory design pattern only, and compared to an existing code-based recommender. The comparative results are promising, as ADPR was successful for all cases of Abstract Factory. Keywords—Software design, design pattern, anti-pattern, design pattern recommendation, abstract factory