UML Representation of Object-Oriented Design Antipatterns

Nowadays the ability to apply, implement and modify patterns of design and architecture has become a one of primary skills for software engineers. Competence of pattern design and implementation involves detecting and correcting inefficient solutions known as antipatterns. However, unlike patterns, very few antipatterns have a graphical representation so that an inefficient solution to a specific problem can be detected visually and refactored. Detecting antipatterns is not simple even with full set of technical documentation. This paper proposes a graphical UML representation of antipatterns to detect them at various stages of the software lifecycle. It proposes a method to refactor described antipatterns to improve software design quality and avoid software development process risks. UML diagrams modeling of 18 antipatterns is presented and refactoring method for all of them was described. Most of antipatterns were diagrammed using information from text descriptions and additional notes about arguable properties of antipatterns were included.