Towards Effective Solutions for Pattern Management

Patterns can be defined as knowledge artifacts, providing a compact and semantically rich representation of a huge quantity of heterogeneous raw data. Due to the specific characteristics of patterns, ad hoc systems are required for pattern management, in order to model, store, retrieve, and manipulate patterns in an efficient and effective way. Pattern management historically concerned the definition of specific pattern extraction methods. Nowdays, the diffusion of knowledge intensive applications has required the ability to model and manage, possibly heterogeneous, patterns in an integrated and more specialized way. In this paper, after introducing the pattern management problem, new issues concerning pattern management are pointed out, discussing possible solutions. The identified challenges concern modeling, querying, manipulation, and architectural issues that, from the author’s point of view, should be taken into account in order to design next generation pattern-management systems.