The concept of patterns was originated by Christopher Alexander. Alexander was an architect. He used patterns to design building and towns. His patterns deal with subjects such as entry ways, gardens and roadways. In the late 1980's people started applying his concept to object oriented software design. The first to do so were Ward Cunningham and Kent Beck, who in 1987 wrote a paper entitled "Using Pattern Languages for Object-Oriented Programs" Which described five patterns that discussed problems in designing Smalltalk windows.
The object oriented community quickly recognized the power of patterns and started writing patterns that appeared in articles, workshops and books. The breakthrough work was the "Design Patterns" book, which brought wide scale acceptance of patterns to the object-oriented world. Work has also been done in the areas of analysis patterns, process patterns, and organizational patterns. This site is an attempt to apply the concept of patterns to XML Structural Design.