SPECIFICATION AND INSTANTIATION OF DOMAIN SPECIFIC PATTERNS BASED ON UML

Domain-specific design patterns provide for architecture reuse of reoccurring design problems in a specific software domain. They capture domain knowledge and design expertise needed for developing applications. Moreover, they accelerate software development since the design of a new application consists in adapting existing patterns, instead of modeling one from the beginning. However, some problems slow their expansion because they have to incorporate flexibility and variability in order to be instantiated for various applications in the domain. This paper proposes new UML notations that better represent the domain-specific design patterns. These notations express variability of patterns to facilitate their comprehension and guide their reuse. The UML extensions are, then, illustrated in the process control system context using an example of an acquisition data pattern.