Term Definition: analysis pattern
Main Description
[FOW97a] speaks of analysis patterns as follows:
"[...] groups of concepts that represent a common construction in business modeling. It may be relevant to only one domain, or it may span many domains."
Therefore, in this reference, the vocabulary of the domain does intrude into the description of the pattern. There is no reason why the definition in [FOW97a] should not be extended to domains other than business modeling. Another aspect of an analysis pattern is that it is an abstract, conceptual template, intended (through binding as with any pattern) for instantiation in an analysis model, which will then need further refinement through design. The scale of an analysis pattern can vary widely, though those presented in [FOW97a] are medium in scale, and would compose to form analysis models for entire applications.