Adapting Software Engineering Design Patterns for Ontology Construction

In this paper, we present an argument for designing metadata schemata with design patterns. Design patterns are structured descriptions of solutions to some class of problems, and are used extensively in various stages of object-oriented software engineering. We present a use case of collaborative construction of metadata for a digital library. We explore design challenges this scenario presents and then adapt a pattern called Composite from a standard software engineering design patterns reference to address parts of these challenges. Additionally, we propose a new design pattern called History suggested by a collaborative metadata construction scenario and applicable to a wider class of problems in metadata design. Key-Words: Design Patterns, Knowledge Engineering, Object-Oriented Design, Semantic Metadata, Web Ontology