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The Structured Patterns Metamodel Standard (SPMS) specification defines a common standard for the definition and description of patterns as used in architecting, designing, and implementing software systems, working with software faults or security issues, and any situation where a pattern is appropriately applied.

 

SPMS has three main goals:

1) Sharing of pattern definitions in repositories or catalogs, including human-oriented specifications and machine oriented formalisms for automated tool use.

2) Sharing of pattern instances – indicators of the existence of a pattern within a model – regardless of how that pattern was determined, with traceability back to the methodology, and traceability to the model artifacts that prove its existence. if applicable. These instances may come from manual assertion, or from the results of an automated tool.

3) A visual representation for pattern instances that augments existing modeling representations and supports both automated production of graphical diagrams, and informal “line and box” style human-generated sketching.

 

The first goal is supported by the Definitions package, which defines a metamodel for defining and storing pattern specifications, suitable for use in tooling and repositories.

 

The second goal is supported by the Observations package, which defines a metamodel for pattern instances. The classes defined here offer support for both human-oriented use cases (consulting, investigation, education) and machine oriented use cases (automated analysis tools, automated results analysis, etc.).

 

Both goals are further supported by the Relationships package, which augments the Definitions package with metadata appropriate for a repository or catalog of patterns. This metadata offers a set of semantic relationships between pattern definitions and instances, enhancing searchability and other use cases appropriate to the domain. Again, both human oriented and machine-oriented use cases are supported in this package.

 

The Formalisms package supports the first goal more thoroughly for automated tool use cases and research purposes. It provides a mechanism for linking to a variety of formal metamodels such as Object Constraint Language (OCL), Knowledge Domain Metamodel (KDM), Abstract Syntax Tree Metamodel (ASTM), or Pattern Hierarchical Object Relation Metamodel Language (PHORML), depending on the needs of the modeler and community.

 

The third goal is supported by the Pattern Instance Notation (PIN) metamodel, which defines a common metamodel for the graphical depiction of pattern instances. It relies on the abstractions defined in SPMS. PIN and the corresponding elements in SPMS are equivalent in their expressive power, and have a one-to-one coherence of features.

 

PIN was developed hand in hand with the Patterns package of SPMS and provides a simple and human-oriented approach for quickly depicting instances of patterns, how they work in concert, and how they are expressed in an implementation or further design document. Most notably, PIN can be used entirely by itself to illustrate pattern interactions independent of an implementation, or used as an annotation with the variety of other graphical notations, such as UML diagrams.