Archive for the ‘pattern’ tag
The Search-Engine Pattern
The Search-Engine pattern is a simple, but powerful pattern. The user provides some sort of search phrase and the search engine returns all matches found in a data store. Next, the user browses the results to select the one she is looking for. When selected details are shown. This is exactly how Google (and other search engines) works.
This pattern is also very useful for maintenance of simple data normally found in an information system.
To apply this pattern to entities under maintenance, they have to fulfill some criteria. The entity must be:
- searchable
- able to return displayable results
- identified by a unique key
The entities in the model shown right fulfill these criteria. They all have a unique identifier. They are searchable through their name, which is also used for displaying in the search results.
When looking in more detail, the entities in the simplified model look very similar. This makes them excellent candidates for a generic code-generated maintenance solution.
