Empirical Analysis of Design Patterns - A Case Study in CompuCell3D

Design Patterns have been widely adopted for building flexible and extensible applications. However, this can come at a cost of reduced performance, which may not be acceptable for computationally intensive applications. Therefore, we investigate the effects of design patterns on application performance through a detailed measurement and profiling of CompuCell3D. It is a software framework for three dimensional (3D) modeling of morphogenesis, which is a stage in embryonic development where cells cluster into tissues and organs. By reverse engineering CompuCell3D subsystems with and without design patterns, we evaluate their impact on application performance and maintainability. Finally, we also extend CompuCell3D functionality, to support irregular domains for biologically realistic simulations.