The Composite Pattern

At this point in time, my group senior project is starting to take shape, our requirements document is almost finished and then we will begin to work on our design architecture. Until we start to work on the design of our project, I can only study design patterns that have a potential for being used. I thought chapter two in Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software was helpful because it walked through a case study which brought up problems with designing and described how certain design patterns can be used to solve these problems. One design that I read about that I already see a use for is the composite pattern. Although graphics for my senior project are not part of my responsibilities, I will still discuss with my group members the benefits, structure, and implementation of using the composite pattern. Since our senior project is going to be a computer game, we will have several menus throughout the game which will be a composite of different several leafs and even other composites. This will allow us to treat individual objects and compositions of objects uniformly.

What Will I Be Working On This Semester?

So far, I have read the introduction to the book, Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, and got a good idea of what this book is all about. I also had a discussion with Dondi on how I will use the information learned from this class for my CMSI 401: Senior Project class. The textbook I am reading is basically a catalog of different types of design patterns and describes the intent, motivation, applicability, structure, consequences, and implementation of each of the design patterns. Dondi gave me a list of certain design patterns which he feels may be useful in my senior project. Hopefully, by reading through these design patterns and becoming familiar with them, I will be able to recognize the need for them, as well as actually implement them in my senior project.

Just Getting Started

When I was registering for Fall 2007 classes, I didn't know which CMSI electives to take, but I knew I was interested in object oriented type concepts. Object technologies was the perfect class for this. According to the course description, I will be learning "Software design and implementation using object oriented and component technologies." This course should also help me in my CMSI 401 and 402 classes this school year since senior project labs are basically two software pieces which both use object oriented technologies. So far, I have not done any work for the class (besides write this blog entry) due to slow processing speeds at the amazon.com textbook store. As soon as I receive my books for this class, I will begin reading the books, updating this blog, discussing the books with Dondi, and coming up with a programming project.