Reusable Roles, a test with Patterns

• Author(s): Barbosa, Fernando Sérgio ; Aguiar, Ademar
• Date: 2011
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.11/2058
• Origin: Repositório Científico do Instituto Politécnico de Castelo Branco
• Subject(s): Roles; Modularity; Libraries; Design patterns
• Document Type: Conference Object
• Language: English

Description

Although roles have been around for a long time they have not yet reached mainstream programming languages. The variety of existing role models may be a limiting factor. We believe that for roles to be widely accepted they must enhance code reuse. An outcome would be a library of roles. We present and discuss what we feel are the characteristics that a role model must have to enable reusable and player independent roles. In this paper we present our role model and JavaStage, a role language that extends Java, with examples of reusable roles. Finally, we present our steps towards the building of a role library, by presenting the roles developed from the analysis of the GoF Design Patterns. The results obtained, we developed roles for 10 of the 23 GoF patterns, are promising.