Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture For Dummies

Keeping Your Catalog Current

Despite your best efforts, you'll always have gaps or outdated material in your pattern catalog for a variety of reasons, such as these:

• Well-known solutions aren't always written as patterns.
• A recurring problem may not have a solution, because whenever it appears, the forces are always quite a bit different.
• New patterns are being published all the time, and you don't have time to read them all.
• Published patterns are being revised continually, slowly in books or quickly on the web, but perhaps faster than you're able to keep up with the changes.

All these factors contribute to the risk that your catalog will grow stale over time. Don't worry — just keep the best catalog you can, and maintain it as often as you can.

Review your catalog periodically, adding helpful new patterns and removing the patterns that are no longer useful. You may need to remove patterns from your collection for a variety of reasons, including the following:

• The problem has disappeared.
• Better alternatives (pattern or nonpattern) are available.
• Technology has evolved.

You may want to keep some outdated patterns in your catalog, however. Even if you won't use them in new designs, you may want to refer to them as you maintain older systems that used those patterns. As you use patterns from your catalog, make notes to remind yourself where and when you used them.

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