Design Patterns for Description-logic Programs

Originally proposed in the mid-90s, design patterns for software development played a key role in object-oriented programming not only in increasing software quality, but also by giving a better understanding of the power and limitations of this paradigm. Since then, several authors have endorsed a similar task for other programming paradigms, in the hope of achieving similar benefits. In this paper we present a set of design patterns for Mdl-programs, a hybrid formalism combining several description logic knowledge bases via a logic program. These patterns are extensively applied in a natural way in a large-scale example that illustrates how their usage greatly simplifies some programming tasks, at the level of both development and extension. We also discuss some limitations of this formalism, examining some usual patterns in other programming paradigms that have no parallel in Mdl-programs.