An empirical investigation on the reusability of design patterns and software packages

摘要

The study attempts to empirically investigate the reusability of design patterns, classes and software packages. The authors indentify 27,461 classes that participate in design patterns and compare the reusability of each of these classes with the reusability of the pattern and the package to which this class belongs. Results show that in more than 40% of the cases investigated, design pattern based class selection, offers the most reusable starting point for white-box reuse. However, there are cases where package based selection might be preferable. (56 refs.)