G'Day, I've been debating with a few people what the difference is between patterns and micro-architectures and I'd appreciate some opinions from people here.
My understanding is that patterns are abstractions, whereas micro-architectures are actual implementations - collections of interacting objects that solve some problem. So, micro-architectures can realise some patten or collection of patterns. Therefore, it should be possible to 'point to' a micro-architecture in some implemented system or UML model and say "that micro-architecture is playing the role 'blah' in the pattern 'blah'". Indeed, some research groups are working on tools to do just that. E.g., www.yann-gael.gueheneuc.net/ Work/Publications/Documents/WCRE04.ppt.pdf However because some patterns are very close to the class level (e.g., the GoFs), it is easy to get confused between what a pattern is and what a micro-architecture is. Indeed in the original GoF paper, that actual makes that confusion: "Design patterns act as building blocks for constructing more complex designs; they can be considered micro-architectures that contribute to overall system architecture." *Design Patterns: Abstraction and Reuse of Object-Oriented Design (1993)* Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides. http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/gamma93design.html Is there some other way of seeing the relationship between patterns and micro-architectures? thanks, Jason
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