A Framework for Integrating the Social Web Environment in Pattern Engineering

In the last decade, patterns have emerged as a notable problem-solving approach in various disciplines. This paper aims to address the communication requirements of the elements of pattern engineering (namely, actors, activities, and artifacts) in general and the pattern realization process in particular. To that regard, a theoretical framework using the Social Web as the medium is proposed and its implications are explored. The prospects of using the Social Web are analyzed by means of practical scenarios and concrete examples. The concerns of using the Social Web related to cost to actors, decentralization and distribution of control, and semiotic quality of representations of patterns are highlighted. The directions for future research including the use of patterns for Social Web applications, and the potential of the confluence of the Social Web and the Semantic Web for communicating the elements of pattern engineering, are briefly explored. IntroductIon The reliance on the knowledge garnered from past experience and expertise is important for any creative endeavor. A pattern is one such type of conceptually reusable knowledge (Buschmann, Henney, & Schmidt, 2007b). From their origins in urban planning and architecture in the 1970s (Alexander, Ishikawa, & Silverstein, 1977; Alexander, 1979), followed by object-oriented software design in the late 1980s and the early 1990s (Gamma et al., 1995), patterns have found applications in various domains of interest (Rising, 2000; Henninger & Corrêa, 2007). For novices, patterns are means of guidance; for experts, they are means of reference. The use of patterns has, for example, enabled the construction of high-quality distributed software architectures (Buschmann, Henney, & Schmidt, 2007a), electronic commerce applications (Kamthan & Pai, 2008), mobile interaction design (Ballard, 2007), secure systems software (Schumacher et al., 2006), use case