A meta-pattern and pattern form for context-patterns

In a previous EuroPlop publication we introduced a catalog of context-patterns. We described common structures and stakeholders for several different domains in our context-patterns. The common elements of the context were obtained from observations about the domain in terms of standards, domain specific-publications, and implementations. Whenever a system-to-be is already described by a context-pattern, one can use this context-pattern to elicit domain knowledge via instantiation of the context-pattern. Moreover, we analyzed the common concepts in our context-patterns and created a meta-model to describe the relations between these concepts. This meta-model was the initial step towards a pattern language for context-patterns. In this work, we show the consequent next step for the definition of a pattern language for context-patterns. In addition, we contribute a structured and guided meta-process for deriving and describing context-patterns, which relies on the previously introduced meta model. The meta process contains a pattern form for context-patterns, which helps to identify the structure of a particular context-pattern. We contribute a (context-) meta pattern, as well, which provides a basis for refinement into any given context-pattern. We illustrate our approach by describing a smart grid context-pattern, which is based on our experience with the industrial partners of the NESSoS project.