“Brokered definition set” design pattern — well-known under another name?

Question

In a project that I\'ve been involved with for many years, I\'ve gradually evolved a design pattern that\'s proven to be extremely useful for me. I sometimes feel I should

Answer 1

What you have is a map, aka Dictionary. You just have a unique twist on it by having multiple keys map to one object.

Why its a map:

• keep a key
• Use the key to query a value from some data structure.

You can find implementations in:

• STL (include: map)
• Java (import: java.util.Dictionary)