Design Pattern Initial Concept
This springcavaj – Design Pattern page briefly describes the Initial Concept of Design Patterns.
This guide will provide a deep understanding of Design Patterns for designing and architecting an application.
What is a Structural Design Pattern?
Structural design patterns focus on composing classes and objects to form larger structures. These patterns provide a blueprint for how objects should interact and how they can be extended without modifying existing code. They help define relationships between components to ensure they work together efficiently while maintaining flexibility and reusability.
Usages of Structural Design Pattern
- Object Composition – Helps in structuring complex systems by composing objects and classes.
- Code Reusability – Encourages reusability by defining standard ways for objects to interact.
- Flexibility – Allows objects to be extended or modified without affecting the whole system.
- Maintainability – Simplifies system updates and modifications by reducing dependencies.
Advantages of Structural Design Pattern
- Code Readability – The code becomes cleaner and easier to understand by organizing relationships.
- Code Reusability – Components are loosely coupled, making them reusable across projects.
- Reduces Complexity – Provides a structured approach to organizing large codebases.
- Enhances Scalability – Adding new functionalities becomes easier without modifying existing code.
Disadvantages of Structural Design Pattern
- Increased Code Complexity – Implementing structural patterns adds extra layers to the code, making debugging harder.
- Overhead in Performance – Some patterns, like Proxy and Flyweight, add an extra step that can impact performance.
- Deciding the Right Pattern – Developers need a deep understanding of selecting the most efficient pattern.
Benefits of Structural Design Pattern
- Improves Code Readability & Maintainability – Defining clear relationships between objects, these patterns make code easier to understand and modify. It helps decoupling components, making it easier to update or replace individual parts.
- Enhances Reusability – It encourages reusing components across different parts of the application and reduces code duplication by defining common structures.
- Increases Flexibility & Scalability – Objects and classes can be easily modified or extended without affecting other modules of the system. The system can grow efficiently as new features are added.
- Optimizes Performance & Memory Usage – It reduces unnecessary object creation, saving memory and processing time. Even, minimizes object duplication through shared instances.
- Provides Better Object Composition – Encourages using composition over inheritance, which avoids deep class hierarchies. Promotes modular design, making components easier to swap and reuse.
- Helps in Proxying & Controlling Access – Enables controlled access to objects, such as adding security, logging, or lazy initialization. It can act as an intermediary between a client and a resource-intensive object.
Types of Structural Design Pattern
- Adapter Design Pattern – It converts the interface of a class into another interface as client expects.
- Bridge Design Pattern – It decouples abstraction from implementation, allowing them to vary independently.
- Composite Design Pattern – Treats individual objects and composition of objects in a tree structure.
- Decorator Design Pattern – Adds responsibilities dynamically to an object without modifying its structure.
- Facade Design Pattern – Provides a simplified, high-level interface to a complex subsystem.
- Flyweight Design Pattern – Reduces memory usage by sharing objects instead of creating new ones.
- Proxy Design Pattern – Acts as a placeholder to control access to an object.
Common Problems Faced
- Too many dependencies between the objects – If we use Facade Design Pattern it will resolve the issue.
- Support multiple implementations – The Bridge Design Pattern solves the problem which separate abstraction from implementation.
- Extend object dynamically – The Decorator Design Pattern solves the problem. Use this pattern instead of subclassing.
- Memory consumption with many similar objects – The Flyweight Design Pattern is used to share object instances.
