A metric for measuring the abstraction level of design patterns

The abstraction level of the problem treated by a design pattern has wide variety, from architecture to near implementation. There is no objective metric indicating the abstraction level of the problems addressed by patterns. Thus, it is difficult to understand the abstraction level of each pattern and to position a new pattern. In this paper, a metric is proposed. It indicates the relative abstraction level of a pattern's problem. We propose a metric obtained from inter-pattern relationships. We also propose a visualization method for the metric. Using such metrics, we aim to help developers easily understand the abstraction level of each pattern and, therefore, to better decide about its usefulness for the problem at hand.