(Guess I should have included the disclaimer: I am not an expert.) A fair point, David. As I said: "I suppose it might be argued that design patterns are an alternative or supplementary expression of best practices, but they still are distinctly different in the way they are applied."
I may be wrong, but this is what I understand to be the difference: You adhere to best practices when designing a solution. But a design pattern is _already_ a fully described solution. You implement a design pattern, adapting it to your problem domain. "Single Sign-On" perhaps is not a good example of a pattern, given that it may be too domain-specific. Someone else (Cat?) might be able to propose a better candidate for what might constitute a design pattern within the practice of system administration. (Full explanation of my "not an expert" disclaimer: I have studied and implemented software design patterns. I am confident in my understanding of them. I am convinced of their utility. But I don't actually have knowledge or experience of the best way to identify candidate patterns and refine those into fully realized "design patterns". I am not an expert, but I'm convinced that, as I stated in my reply to Cat, after 40+ years, there _should_ be at least some recurring problems within the practice of our craft that are sufficiently well understood to allow us to codify the generalized, reusable solutions to these problems into at least a limited collection design patterns. Maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe, as I mentioned previously, our needs are better served by these "architectural patterns" hinted at in the Design patterns Wikipedia article...or perhaps are best served by some other similar solution expression. Maybe you and Jesse are correct and related groups of "best practices" are the only way to express this. But from my experience with software design patterns, I hope we can do better. Best practices are wonderful and certainly necessary on their own. I dont' think patterns can replace best practices. But I believe there are huge rewards to be reaped if we can go the extra step to provide both.) On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 12:43, <da...@lang.hm> wrote: > another way of stating your "design pattern" would be "best practices for > creating a Single Sign-On infrastructure" > > David Lang _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.lopsa.org https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
