Re: Archetypes vs Stereotypes

John-
I thought I should explain some differences between role stereotypes
and Coad's archetypes. I think my (Wirfs-Brock's) role stereotypes are
more fundamental behavioral characterizations than Coad's domain
archetypes. An information holder is an object that primarily is
charged with providing information. A controller is responsible for
directing the actions of a number of other objects. A service provider
(or service) is responsible for doing some operation on demand. On the
other hand, Coad's domain archetypes are all about describing the
relations between business domain objects--roles, partys,
moment-intervals, and things. They are a different way of
characterizing domain object that represent business concepts. So while
Coad's description stereotypes, for example, may primary be information
holders, it isn't always easy to give his archetypes a one-to-one
mapping to my role stereotypes.

My (Wirfs-Brock's) role stereotypes are definitely not a subtype of
Coad's archetype called role. He is defining role to be an object that
represents the attributes of some person or entity that is playing in a
particular context (say an employee role or a student role or a teacher
role). I was using role stereotype to mean behavior stereotype.

Hope this helps a bit.

Rebecca
John Carter wrote:
I'm confuzzled.

I've being reading Rebecca Wirfs-Brock's "Object Design: Roles,
Responsibilities, and Collaborations" and got the notion of
"Role Stereotypes" - Information Holder, Coordinator, Controller, Service
Provider, Structurer, Interfacer.

http://www.wirfs-brock.com/PDFs/Characterizing%20Classes.pdf


Then I was sniffing around the Law of Demeter literature to see what the
state of the art there had got to and found Peter Coad's Archetypes,
Color Models and Domain Neutral Component - Moment Intervals, Roles,
Party, Description.


http://bdn1.borland.com/borcon2004/article/paper/0,1963,32095,00.html


Now I'm trying mash the two in my head and it's not fitting very well....


Question: Is the "Role" Wirfs-Brock's "Role Stereotypes" sub-categories
of the "Roles" Archetype of Coad?

ie. Colour every Information Holder, Coordinator, Controller, Service
Provider, Structurer, Interfacer yellow.


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John Carter Phone : (64)(3) 358 6639
Tait Electronics Fax : (64)(3) 359 4632
PO Box 1645 Christchurch Email :
john.caNrOteSrP@xxxxxxxxxxxx New Zealand

"We have more to fear from
The Bungling of the Incompetent
Than from the Machinations of the Wicked." (source unknown)

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