Formal models of object-oriented patterns using RTPA

The development of generically reusable object-oriented components is a task with a higher degree of cognitive complexity. Design patterns are an important means to deal with this difficulty for capturing design notions and recurrent architectures in software engineering. Since patterns are inherently complicated, the conventional diagram-based techniques cannot rigorously and explicitly denote the architectures and behaviors of patterns. Real-time process algebra (RTPA) is used to describe software patterns formally and explicitly in order to enhance the understandability of their architectures, semantics, and behaviors. This paper presents a formal model of generic patterns, which focuses on architectural and associational descriptions of a pattern's interfaces, implementation, and instantiations. A typical creational pattern, the builder pattern, is provided as a case study on the applications of the generic pattern model. This paper demonstrates that software patterns can be rigorously, efficiently, and effectively designed and implemented based on the formal pattern model