A systematic literature mapping on the relationship between design patterns and bad smells

ABSTRACT

Bad Smells are symptoms that appear in the source code of a software system and may indicate a structural problem that requires code refactoring. Design patterns are solutions known as good practices that help building software systems with high quality and flexibility. Intuitively, it is possible to assume that the use of design patterns might avoid bad smells. Intriguingly, some recent studies have pointed out that this assumption is not true. This paper presents a systematic literature mapping of studies that investigate the relationship between design patterns and bad smells. We identified 16 papers which were categorized into three different approaches: impact on software quality, refactoring and co-occurrence. Amongst these three approaches, the co-occurrence relationship is the less explored in the literature. In addition, we identified that studies focusing on co-occurrence between design patterns and bad smells have generally analyzed the relationship between the GOF design patterns and bad smells described by Fowler and Beck. In this context, the Command design pattern was identified as the one with greater relationship with bad smells.

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Index Terms

• General and reference

  • Cross-computing tools and techniques

    • Empirical studies

• Social and professional topics

  • Professional topics

    • Management of computing and information systems

      • System management

        • Quality assurance

• Software and its engineering

  • Software creation and management

    • Software development process management

      • Software development methods

        • Design patterns