Design Patterns

4Structural Patterns

Structural patterns are patterns whose sole purpose is to facilitate the work of changing the structural associations of classes, class associations, and hierarchies of class structures. Most structural patterns take on the form of facades or types of proxies and adapters. There is one exception to this — the Flyweight pattern. This pattern is also a structural pattern in that it provides an adaptation of sorts, albeit a disjointed one. Since it does have the definition of changing the structural association of classes in the form of shared instances as opposed to individual ones, it is included with this group of patterns. We will discuss the Flyweight pattern later in the chapter. For now we will concentrate on patterns ...