Pattern semantic link: A reusable pattern representation in MDA context

Currently most of pattern-related specifications represent design patterns limited at specific implementation forms on one abstract level and restrict to reuse patterns across different abstract levels, such as Platform-Independent Models (PIMs) and Platform-Specific Models (PSMs). This paper proposes a novel pattern representation named Pattern Semantic Link (PSL), which provides a centralized and abstract representation for a pattern. Borrowing ideals from the Intentional Programming (IP), the core PSL concepts are capturing the knowledge about relationships between participants of a pattern by instances of the UML Association derived classes, capturing key intentions of the pattern by constraints in the Object Constraint Language (OCL) and rendering the reference implementations for the pattern based on its PSL definition. Through the meta-model inheritance and marking approach, transforming a model with PSLs to its platform-specific counterpart and reusing patterns across PIMs and PSMs can be achieved.