Available to users of Rational Software Architect 6.0, the patterns can be used for developing applications using WebSphere’s JMS (Java Messaging service) facility.
According to Angel Diaz, director of on-demand software development for IBM Software, the goal is to provide developers with actual reusable assets rather than descriptive white papers.
The effort, which began a month ago with the publishing of several patterns for developing Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs), is adding six new patterns under the category of WebSphere Platform Messaging.
Available through IBM’s DeveloperWorks portal, the patterns consist of UML models that can be downloaded from IBM’s Rational repository to Rational tools, where they can be modified or used as is to generate code.
Patterns emerged in the software development community with the first object-oriented languages in the late 1980s and early 90s. They emerged to help fulfill one of the promises of object-oriented approaches, which is the ability to reuse code and designs.
One of the best-known sources of patterns was a book written by a group of authors widely known throughout the software development community as The Gang of Four.
Entitled simply, the Design Patterns Book, it provided high-level recipes covering abstract functions such as how to design software classes that automatically spawn new software classes. Since then, numerous books have been published and online portals opened where developers can get access to patterns.
Diaz insisted that IBM’s new portal on DevelopWorks is an attempt to make patterns more practical, going beyond design principles to include the actual UML.
This is not just a spec, but a full asset that can be downloaded, he said. With the UML, developers or designers can make their own tweaks and use the Rational tools to generate code.
The patterns just released cover functions such as how to deploy a JMS-based messaging platform in WebSphere, how to send or receive messages in a queue, and how to create a sequence of message transformations for enterprise service bus (ESB) projects.
In the future, IBM will release additional patterns addressing security, portals, and data transformations.
