Applying Design Patterns to Remove Software Performance Antipatterns: A Preliminary Approach

Patterns and antipatterns represent powerful instruments in the hands of software designers, for improving the quality of software systems. A large variety of design patterns arose since decades, as well as several performance antipatterns have been defined. In this paper we propose a preliminary approach for antipattern-based refactoring of software systems, driven by design patterns application. The approach is focused on refactoring software artifacts (i.e., models, code) by applying design patterns, with the aim of removing possible performance antipatterns occurring on such artifacts. Based on our approach, design patterns are ranked in order to drive the refactoring choice. We also provide an illustrative example as a preliminary validation of our approach, showing how the ranking method works over three design patterns for removing the Empty Semi-Trucks performance antipattern, and we finally identify future research directions of our work.